I went from White House to secret prison

U.S. authorities detained a top aide to former Iraqi exile leader and Bush administration ally Ahmad Chalabi last year and accused him of helping Iranian-backed militants kidnap and kill American and British soldiers and contractors.

The aide, Ali Feisal al Lami , said he was quizzed about Iranian agents, senior Shiite Muslim politicians and deadly bombings. Then, Lami said, he asked his American interrogator: Have you ever been to the White House ?

"He said, 'No,' " Lami told McClatchy . "I told him, 'Well, I have.' "

Lami said he'd visited the White House with Chalabi in November 2005 and met with a senior administration Mideast expert. By August 2008 , however, when Lami was arrested at the Baghdad airport , the U.S. command considered him a dangerous man with links to Shiite terrorist groups and the Iranian intelligence apparatus.

He was released without charges last month after a 352-day detention, a quarter of it spent in what he claimed was a secret U.S.-run prison in Iraq . American officials in Iraq confirmed that Lami was detained, but they declined to reveal where he was held before the detention facility at Camp Cropper in Baghdad , where the U.S. military holds high-value detainees. More