Posted on 10/01/2009 5:02:04 AM PDT by SJackson
In December of 2007, I wrote an article about the National Intelligence Estimate that had just concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program back in 2003. The immediate effect of this Pollyannaish report was to diminish the need for tough sanctions against Iran and to take the military option off the table.
We now know that the conclusion reached in the report was categorically false and that those who issued the report knew it was false. I titled my December 2007 article “Stupid Intelligence,” because, as I argued, its author had fallen hook, line and sinker for a transparent bait and switch tactic employed by Iran.
“The tactic is obvious and well-known to all intelligence officials with an IQ above room temperature. It goes like this: There are two tracks to making nuclear weapons: One is to conduct research and develop technology directly related to military use…[T]he second track is to develop nuclear technology for civilian use and then to use the civilian technology for military purposes.”
It was clear to many perceptive readers of the report, and to most other intelligence agencies, that Iran had simply and deceptively opted for the second track, and had certainly not abandoned its nuclear weapons program.
It now turns out that at the time this “stupid intelligence” estimate was released, our intelligence agencies were aware that the Iranians were building a secret military facility buried deep in the mountains near the holy city of Qom.
The United States recently disclosed the existence of this facility (after Iran was forced to acknowledge its existence) and concluded that it could be used only for the development of a nuclear weapons program. If the intelligence community knew then what they know now, then its 2007 National Intelligence Estimate was not only stupid. It was dishonest.
It seems clear in retrospect, as it seemed clear to me at the time, that those who released this deeply flawed report had a political agenda. As I wrote two years ago:
My own view is that the authors of the report were fighting the last war. No, not the war in Iraq, but rather what they believe was Vice President Cheney’s efforts to go to war with Iran. This report surely takes the wind out of those sails. But that was last year’s unfought war. Nobody in Washington has seriously considered attacking Iran since Condoleezza Rice and Robert Gates replaced Cheney as the foreign policy power behind the throne.
Whatever the agenda was, it is improper – indeed it is illegal – for intelligence agencies to try to influence policy through a hidden agenda. Their job is to report truthfully to the elected policy makers so that they can make policy.
The time has come to withdraw the false and dangerous 2007 report, to admit it was wrong, and to substitute an intelligent, honest, objective and up-to-date report on how close Iran now is to being able to construct a deliverable nuclear bomb. The issue of how to deal with the threat posed by an apocalyptic, terrorist nation about to obtain nuclear weapons is too important to be left to politicized intelligence agencies with hidden agendas.
MI Ping
FU Dershovitz, still an unrepentent leftist. Why doesn’t he call this corrupted intelligence what is obvious, Treason! This must be investigated!
No Alan your Cult leader knew and lied so he wouldn’t have to deal w/this not that he cares:
http://www.brayincandy.com/id28.html
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Of the three officials who wrote the NIE, two are in the Obama administration and one returned to academe at Stanford. They have only just begun to pay the penalty for their mendacity.
“Those who released this deeply flawed report had a political agenda.”
Well, DUHHH!!! The leaking of intelligence is both a political act and a crime. Like the media’s October surprises of 2000 and 2004, the leak was meant to affect the outcome of the presidential election. The lst Amendment says that a manipulative media can’t be prosecuted, but there is—or at least there should be—no such protection for intelligence officials who seek to manipulate public opinion. Why aren’t these people in prison?
>> Of the three officials who wrote the NIE, two are in the Obama administration and one returned to academe at Stanford. <<
Why keep us in suspense? Who are they?
Alan those like his ilk must live in a constant state of hell on earth.
Jewish Americans, who support Israel and yet vote for people like Carter and Obamadinejad, who hate Israel and any real Jews.
Alan is another poster boy of the so called intelligent elite lefties, who are truly mentally ill.
our intelligence services have been so politically compromised as to have become almost worthless. The next Conservative administration will have to carry out a massive restructuring (read “purge”) at all levels (the Valerie Plame-types will all need to find themselves working on the Namibia desk at an annex location out in Leesburg...)
The despicable, if not traitorous triad are Van Vann Diepen who has moved up a rung at the State Department, Ken Brill, who Obama made chief of the National Counterproleferation Center, and the egregious Tom Fingar who found a home at Stanford.
Ambassador White stuck his head in the reactor, and heard a rendition of “Ain’t No One Here But Us Chickens” in Farsi, so he concluded that Iran is also not developing WMD. His second cousin was later outed as running a shoe-shine stand next to the CIA, and Ted Kennedy (ZTz”L) demanded a massive investigation of this leak. How was that dishonest?
I don't disagree, I've no problem with Bush officials going to jail, but Dershovitz was pretty clear in his condemnation.
It was a political decision, not one based on national security. GWB should have cleaned up State on arrival. To be generous incompetence which should have cost the authors their jobs. Fat chance.
So yet more treason intended to undermine the Bush administration at the time?
That’s a reasonable conclusion. If they believed the report the presented, they were very wrong, and should be in another line of work. I saw nothing but politics in it at the time, but GWB didn’t contest it.
And from now there will be essentially NO human derived intelligence. Hussein and his AG have shut down the CIA insofar as intelligence gathering goes. CIA agents will not be using any tactics or ruses that might not pass muster at a high class prep school.
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