Dec 05 2007
It’s Official, Iran NIE Was Not A Consensus Finding
The Washington Post is out this morning with story quoting intel officials who admit that the conclusion that Iran’s nuclear weapons program is still suspended was not a consensus view (hence the low confidence it was given), but was in fact challenged by key elements of the intelligence community:
McConnell said his objective in preparing the Iran estimate was “to present the clinical evidence and let it stand on its own merits with its own qualification,” meaning that it would contain dissent. “There are always disagreements on every National Intelligence Estimate,” he said.
He and other officials jettisoned a requirement that each conclusion in an NIE reflect a consensus view of the intelligence community — a requirement that in the past yielded “lowest-common-denominator judgments,” said one senior intelligence official familiar with the reforms.
“We demolished democracy” by no longer reflecting just a majority opinion, “because we felt we should not be determining the credibility of analytic arguments by a raising of hands,” the official said. Some analysts, for example, were not “highly confident” that Iran has not restarted its nuclear program, a result reflected in the classified report. Other analysts said Iran was further away from attaining a nuclear weapons capability than the majority said.
In other words they don’t know (and that can be said with high confidence now) if Iran has their weapons program ongoing now or not – even if Iran claims they do! It looks like some decided to push their views over those of others and stage a media event.
And what did they base this reckless conclusion on which can mean life or death for thousands of people? Folks, you just are not going to believe this one:
In the case of Iran, critical information was gleaned from non-clandestine sources, such as news photographs taken in 2005 depicting the inner workings of one of Iran’s uranium enrichment plants, an official said.
Those photos helped persuade analysts that the Natanz plant was suited to making low-enriched uranium for nuclear energy but not the highly enriched uranium needed for bombs. “You go to wherever you think the answer might be,” the official said, “instead of waiting for it to trickle into your top-secret computer system.”
Media pictures from a guided (and therefore controlled) tour of the plant by the Iranians? Did anyone think Iran would be using the event to stage an impression? No wonder there are claims we are being duped! Can anyone say for sure the pictures cover the entire facility?
This stinks of a staged media event for political propaganda, something not easily done in today’s internet world with hundreds of fact checkers ready to analyze reports like this in a matter of minutes. If we find Congressional Democrat fingerprints on this circus there will be hell to pay. The excuse given for this travesty is the authors did not want to screw up like the intel community has many times before. But guess what? It seems they did.
I mean, isn’t cooking the intel what the Dems have been screaming about (without a shred of evidence) for years now? Now we have cooked intel, leaked to the liberal media, cooked by Clinton holdovers, and directed by Senate Democrats (Reid said the NIE was in response to his requests). If the Dems cooked intel for a Presidential campaign edge and tried to trick the country on a matter of a nuclear threat then they will be in serious, serious trouble. Legal and political.
Update: Mac Ranger notes the IAEA is not buying the NIE’s conclusion Iran is not developing nuclear weapons. Kurt Hoglund has a good description of the bureaucracy this report came out of, and it did not come out of the ‘intel community’ but a new oversight group. It is a good reference for how this oversight group co-opted the community.
Update: Ed Morrissey has a snippet from the WSJ that identifies the three anti-Bush authors of this NIE which was not a consensus but really a political bombshell:
Our own “confidence” is not heightened by the fact that the NIE’s main authors include three former State Department officials with previous reputations as “hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials,” according to an intelligence source. They are Tom Fingar, formerly of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research; Vann Van Diepen, the National Intelligence Officer for WMD; and Kenneth Brill, the former U.S. Ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
I am pretty sure Fingar led INR when Valerie Plame led the Joint Task Force on Iraq and sent her husband to Niger in 1999 (see here and here). I find it hard to believe they did not know each other. I am not sure where Fingar was in 2002 when Plame sent Joe back to Niger to debunk forged documents the CIA supposedly did not have yet. But one gets the feeling this NIE has some serious issues.
Update: Ed Laskey at American Thinker has more on the NIE’s three authors who decided their views would supersede the views of the actual intel gathering agencies they purported to speak for.
It is clear we may have three rogue State Department officials using flimsy evidence to push their agendas – but the awkward and klutzy way in which they did it may have real serious dangers. Now some people are taking this NIE to mean there is no need to put any pressure on Iran and its nuclear program, and Iran is declaring victory (which I believe these instigators would not mind in the least):
Russia’s foreign minister, meanwhile, indicated that the U.S. report’s findings undermined Washington’s push for a new set of U.N. sanctions against Iran.
The U.S. intelligence report released Monday concluded that Iran had stopped its weapons program in late 2003 and shown no signs since of resuming it, representing a sharp turnaround from a previous intelligence assessment in 2005.
“This is a declaration of victory for the Iranian nation against the world powers over the nuclear issue,” Ahmadinejad told thousands of people during a visit to Ilam province in western Iran.
I seriously think these klutzes thought they could simply issue a report and little would come of it except Bush might have his hands tied if Iran was found making nukes. I mean there will be more intel and if these folks are wrong the intel will reverse the finding again (even though we now know from above there are those who believe they have intel NOW showing Iran restarted the nuke program). Were these officials just bunglers of the highest degree? But the truth is this finding is having very dangerous repercussions. If we lose the sanctions on Iran we may be heading for a very explosive showdown with Iran.
AJ Strata,
My apologies for jumping the gun on assuming you were intentionally not posting my comments. I have had recent experience with other conservative blogs that did not post my comments and yet posted numerous comments that supported their position. I know that some liberal and conservative blogs selectively post the comments, so I thought you might be one of those blogs. Kudos to you for being willing to air both sides of the issue.
As to your comment, I did read your post. What I said is true – the NIE is a consensus view of all 16 intelligence agencies. There is nothing in the NIE or the information you provided that suggests that any of the intelligence agencies refuted or disagreed with the NIE conclusions. I did not say that it is a consensus view of every single intelligence indiviual that worked on the NIE. As McConnell indictaed in the quote from your post, “There are always disagreements on every National Intelligence Estimate.†My point is that your claim that this new NIE is somehow less reliable or trustworthy than past NIEs is bogus because there is always some dissenting views. If we cannot rely on a NIE unless every single person in the intelligence community agrees with its conclusions, and McConnell tells us that there is always disagreement, then I guess your point is that we should never rely on any NIE. With all due respect, I think that position is ridiculous.
I noticed that you did not respond to any of the other points I made. Maybe you are too busy with other things, but I’m really interested in your response to the other issues I raised. While I admittedly can be abrassive with my comments because I’m passionate about politics and frustrated with what I view as the ever increasing twisting of facts to fit one’s partisan beliefs (on both sides – Democrats and Republicans), I really do want to engage in an honest dialogue about these important issue to see if I can convince those on the other side of the political aisle of my beliefs or learn something new that will change my beliefs.
Our “war mongering” president relied on the NIE for Iraq too. The criticism there was that he should not have because there were dissenting views on certain issues. Now you say he should ignore dissent and go with the general findings.
He’s relying on this NIE in the same way as he did with Iraq. If the intelligence community believes that the “estimate” should not read as it does, its up to them to change it—not have the dissenters leak intelligence and press releases after the fact to try and undermine a sitting presidents efforts to deal with a national security issue based on their own depts findings!
DC,
I disagree that the criticism of Bush’s reliance on the NIE for Iraq was his failure to consider dissenting views. The criticism that I and most others have is that the White House pressured the intelligence community to reach the conclusions they did in the NIE in order to justify the decision to attack Iraq. Cheney, Rumsfeld and their neocon minions were constantly over at the CIA and DIA challenging and pushing back on the intelligence community to support their belief that Iraq had WMDs. We “critics” believe the White House pressure was responsible in part for the flawed NIE because the intelligence community was pressured into reaching a conclusion that would support Bush and Cheney’s desire to attack Iraq. You need only consider the White Houses reaction to finding out there were no WMDs in Iraq (Bush’s infamous – I would have made the same decision had I known what i know now) to understand that the WMDs was never the reason for the war, but rather merely a justification for it.
Part of the reason that I give more crediblity to this latest NIE is that I believe the White House has the same opinion about Iran and presumably was pressuring the intelligence community to justify the desire to attack Iran. You need only look at Bush’s rhetoric after he found out about the NIE notwithstanding his lame lie to the contrary (October 2007 speech refering to World War III) and his rhetoric since the NIE has been made public (December 4th press conferecne “I think the NIE makes it clear that Iran needs to be taken seriously as a threat to peace. My opinion hasn’t changed.”) to understand that Bush’s position on Iran has nothing to do with whether or not they have nuclear weapons program. If the intelligence agencies decided to completely reverse their earlier position in the face of considerable pressure from the White House, no small feat, that gives me more confidence in the end result.
I’m totally confused by your statement that the intelligence community should change their original estimate rather than have the dissenters leak intelligence and provide press releases. The intelligence community did exactly what you suggest – they concluded based on new information that their previous estimate was wrong and chnaged it with the new NIE. They weren’t trying to undermine the President – they were trying to make sure he is making policy decisions based on accurate information. Why is that wrong – isn’t that the whole purpose of the NIE? I also think you are confused about who is now the “dissenters”. The dissenters are not the people whom believe the NIE needed to be changed, the dissenters are the people whom believe the new NIE is wrong. Mark my words, there will be those in the White House and the “dissenters” in the intelligence community that will be leaking information to the press in order to undermine the new NIE over the next few months. I wonder if you will feel the same distain for this leaking activity when it is being done by the people whom apparently share your beliefs.
Conman,
No problem. However – reread the WaPo snippet and you will see the authors stating quite clearly they did NOT go with consensus – it is right up there. And my new post today by the NY Times which confirms the fact there was no consensus on Iran’s continued suspension.
Sorry man, but the reporters have the sources on record – your views don’t weigh enough to disregard the on-the-record statements.
It was not a consensus – this NIE (as reported) is not the same flavor as previous ones. Read the articles again – you will see it.
Let me save you some time. Here is the reporting from NY Times today:
That is not consensus. And from WaPo Yesterday:
Clear? They “jettisoned a requirement that each conclusion in an NIE reflect a consensus view of the intelligence community” – and all the reporting on where that consensus broke down, in both papers, is in the conclusion Iran has continued the suspension.
What can I tell you – your just wrong.
AJ,
I admit that I overlooked an issue raised in the WaPo article that you clarified in your latest post, but I still don’t think it means that my statements are incorrect. I overlooked the significance of the statement about jettisoning the requirement that each conclusion reflect a consensus view. however, I think you are reading too much into that statement and I’m still not sure how that squares with McConnell’s earlier statement that “There are always disagreements on every National Intelligence Estimate,†but we’ll leave that issue aside for now.
I still don’t think that means my statements are incorrect. Look carefully at McConnell’s statement – he repeatedly refers to some “analyst” that did not agree with the conclusion. He never said that any of the 16 intelligence agencies disagreed, but rather is merely saying that some analyst disagreed. I don’t doubt that some analyst disagree with the conclusions – McConnell himself stated that is always the case. I do not believe there is any evidence that there was disagreement among the various intelligence agencies. If we learned that some of the intelligence agencies disagreed with the conclusions, rather than individual analysts, that would mean a whole lot more to me.
I guess we will have to wait and see how things shake out on this issue as both sides leak information to the press in an attempt to bolster their position. What is undisputable is that a majority of the intelligence community concurs with the new NIE conclusions. It is also very significant that they did so knowing that it was a complete reversal of the previous NIE. I don’t believe that the intelligence community would reverse itself on such a significant and contraversial issue unless they were confident that the new conclusions were correct.
The notion that the president pressured analysts or anybody else in the intelligence field by “requesting” estimates..is ludicrous. That would be your problem right there..if that’s the basis of your understanding and argument.
The initial disagreement was not that. It was over “how it was used” by the president — which is not even the realm of intelligence gathering to start with. That’s not their job nor their call to make. Its about as stupid as the congress trying to do it because “they” want to be president but arent’.
I think what you are trying to say conman is….that the reason this NIE is good….is because it disagrees with what Boooosh said.