NIE Mini Roundup
The release of the conclusions in the recent NIE (PDF) on Iran’s nuclear program has provoked widespread commentary in the blogosphere. The pure politics of the release is best dealt with elsewhere but here are a few words from some folks with more than nimble typing fingers to back up their analysis:
“The declassified key judgments of the latest NIE on Iran are yet another opportunity to get a glimpse of the inner-workings of the highest levels of the intelligence community. The picture isn’t pretty. The key judgments are notable for many reasons, not the least of which is how they contrast with the last NIE on this same topic. In 2005, with access to an Iranian source’s laptop, the community was confident that Iran was determined to build a nuclear weapon “despite its international obligations and international pressure.” Today it is equally confident that Iran halted its weapons program in 2003 and that it remained suspended for several years”
“I will note that the supposedly secret uranium enrichment program that the administration accused North Korea of, and broke up the Agreed Framework for, was disavowed by the intelligence community earlier this year in much the same way that this NIE disavows the 2005 NIE on Iran. I’ll also note that proving a negative is difficult, and one of the favorite tactics of the right: we say that you’ve got a secret program. Prove to us you don’t.”
“ Dafna Linzer reports in the Washington Post that a crucial bit of information was an intercepted communication by a senior Iranian military official “complaining that the nuclear program had been shuttered.”The intercept – which Linzer notes was one of 1,000 footnotes in a 150 page document – was the final piece in the puzzle, and Linzer reports that the intercepts were briefed to the Bush Administration “beginning in July.”So, that timing would be consistent with Mike McConnell’s reference to “new information collected in late spring that caused a reconsideration of some elements of the assessment.”
Swedish Meatballs Confidential:
“The ‘new’ NIE on Iran’s nuclear weapons program [9-page pdf] — which has been [minor tweaks aside] in the can for nearly a year now — was released this afternoon. It is clear why the Cheney Cabal didn’t want this estimate to see the light of day.”
“ While the NIE clearly shifts the assessment of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, it acknowledges the regime continues to engage in dangerous behavior and comes down firmly on the side of political and economic pressure as an effective means of changing Iranian behavior. According to the NIE, Iran’s decision to halt its nuclear weapons program on the fall of 2003 was “in response to increasing international scrutiny and pressure resulting from exposure of Iran’s previously undeclared nuclear work.” (It was around this time that the U.S. and other governments exposed the A.Q. Kahn network and its international nuclear weapons material black market). The key judgments conclude that “our assessment that the [nuclear weapons] program probably was halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue that we judged previously.”
” The chimera of Iran as deadly menace is a product of Israeli paranoia and debilitating fear of the “other.” This fear saturates Israeli strategic thinking making impossible for them a rational contemplation of the odds against Iranian suicide attacks against Israel. Israel rejects the concept of deterrence of nuclear attack through creation of MAD (mutual assured destruction). I have described their reasoning elsewhere in these pages. Given the awful nature of Jewish history, such overwhelming fear of the return of the final “gollum,” or perhaps Azrael himself is comprehensible.”
“ Iran’s choice is reasonably smart: talk big like Libya, stop short of weapons like Japan, but signal willingness to aggressively defend like Israel. I told you these guys are not stupid.”
I recall, as a lowly grad student, that many of the documents I would have loved to have had my hands on – NIE’s and PDD/NSDD’s referred to in secondary literature – were locked up tight, despite having been issued sometimes decades earlier. It’s rather surreal, from a historian’s perspective, seeing even partial declassification of a just issued NIE. Until recently at least, the USG had still classified documents going back to 1917 ( most likely covering cryptological sources and methods)!
The devil is in the details, to which we are not privy. Traditionally, the NIC process constructing a NIE would have a NIO as point man and emerge as a consensus, with the CIA often being the heavyweight in the interagency wrangling. Supposedly, procedures have changed since the pre-Iraq War days to clarify the degree of certainty in an inherently uncertain scenario. Given the general unwillingness of IC bureaucracies to reconsider even information-sharing habits, how robust were the changes in the analytical methodology ?
December 5th, 2007 at 4:49 am
Bob Baer noted in Time that it was likely Pres. Bush who was behind the release. Worth a read:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1690696,00.html
December 5th, 2007 at 3:27 pm
Thanks. Nice roundup. I’m planning to do one of my own on a somewhat different basis.
December 5th, 2007 at 9:11 pm
Wow, thanks for the nod. Always the high honor, Count. And might I compliment you on going 2.0 with your website’s appearance. Your previous GUI stood out, and quite remarkably so, as the ugliest 😉 amongst your blogging cluster of peers. I might only suggest, and this because your content is always of a nature superior to any clever or pretty GUI known yet to man, that perhaps the height of your titular graphic be reduced a few percent so as to get more of your excellent content immediately splashing up on screen when dropping by on my handy Nokia N95 ;).
Now, as a small follow-up to our post:
David I. puts forward the institutional POV at WaPo, per usual.
The Myth of the Mad Mullahs.
He does participate in the big misdirect du jour, the assertion that the newsmaking paradigm-shift from the NIE was a new development.
It wasn’t. We did a piece in May 2006 publicizing the fact that the Iran WMD NIE had been ordered. As you know those things take up to 6 months, not 18 months.
And, numerous media reports have been saying since the beginning of 2007 that Cheney has been sending back the NIE for further work. The only reason for that would be that he disagreed about the substance of the conclusions.
And the talking point that recent "intercepts" have anything to do with the "about-face" is simply ludicrous. If true, do you think anyone would be talking about it?
Also, he does address the Iran as "rational actor" controversy/argument that we have been dealing with online for ages.
Again, congrats on the new look, stimulating content, and all your underpinning efforts.
(Now, can we borrow those five bucks I mentioned earlier?)
December 6th, 2007 at 12:35 am
Eddie – on Baer:
Baer says: But there is also no doubt that the Bush White House was behind this NIE. While the 16 intelligence agencies that make up the "intelligence community" contribute to each National Intelligence Estimate, you can bet that an explosive, 180-degree turn on Iran like this one was greenlighted by the President.
All available evidence points to the opposite conclusion. The WH was dragging their feet to the point of having McConnell announce in November that the then-forthcoming NIE would not be publicly released.
There is another reason the NIE was released.
Last year, Congress required that key judgments from the NIE be declassified.
McConnell was doing the administration’s bidding by trying to withhold the NIE. Prudent folks realized that the bombshell would leak, probably sooner than later. McConnell merely acted in accordance with the mandate from Congress when he signed off on the release of the NIE.
I believe Baer is wrong.
December 6th, 2007 at 4:50 am
Hi Meatball Crew,
Yes, this critique was passed on to me by a blogfriend and I duly mentioned it to the webmaster/spouse who was in the midst of trying to get a major client’s site finalized, a set of storyboards for two others completed and her own site updated and I swiftly realized that it might not have been the moment for constructive criticism. LOL!
The Nokia bit helps the cause though – I will pass that on. I don’t think that aspect was considered a priori. It’s easy for us stay-at-homes to forget that ppl read blogs at O’Hare, LaGuardia, LAX and Reagan National.
Hi M1
When’s that vidcast/podcast with Meatball Rose revving up, eh ? :o)
December 6th, 2007 at 5:04 am
D’OH – where are my manners ? Much thanks for the compliment, Meatball crew!
December 6th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
isn’t it a GOOD thing that Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapons program? or that it’s our best guess that they dont? Are there people who are dissapointed that we are relatively safe thanks to the elimination of the primary cause of Irans program: the hussein regime?
December 6th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
hi lester,
"isn’t it a GOOD thing that Iran doesn’t have a nuclear weapons program? "
Yes.
And it needs to be kept that way
December 6th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
It’s all my fault.The vid-casts are but waiting for me to leave my iron lung for half a day and provide Meatball Rose with one last facilitating techy resource. Otherwise she’s a rarin’ to go and keep you gurlz & guyz mezmerized.
Sorry btw for all those hyperlinks in my previous commentary. It never occurred to me how spamalicious they could end up appearing.
…and Yes, I rely quite heavily on my mobile device/smart phone to fetch my daily staple of blogs and news. I prefer my trusty laptop for considered consumption of & commentary on such goodies, but my phone keeps me fed with inspiring tantalizations throughout my geo-fluxing days. But hey, I can read ZenPundit just fine as is. I was just regressing somewhat to my occasional Eurosexual self with my comment on graphics and their proportions.
Back to the NIE, just one last comment/note:
From a piece by Philip Giraldi in the Feb. 12 2007 issue of The American Conservative:
An as yet unreleased U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iran concludes that the evidence for a weapons program is largely circumstantial and inconclusive, while the Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte reported that Iran is five to ten years away from having a weapon even if it accelerates the process and no one interferes with its development. Negroponte was predictably fired for his unwillingness to alter the intelligence, and the NIE is unlikely to see the light of day unless it is rewritten to conclude that Iran is an immediate threat.
Philip Giraldi, a former CIA Officer, is a partner in Cannistraro Associates, an international security consultancy.
December 8th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
zen- I think we have bigger fish to fry than a possible unlikely in the next decade nuke in another part of the world. Our joke-ola dollar for one
December 8th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
"her own site updated "
Well, she obviously seems the smarter of the two, have you got a link to her site, or do we know it already 🙂
December 8th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
So Zen, are you actually in China or using a Chinese server? The time of my posting reads on your site 7:01pm. According to my watch it was actually 11:01AM. Ah so, this would explain a lot.
December 10th, 2007 at 3:14 am
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