On Monday, the Intelligence Community, known in Washington-ese as the “IC,” issued a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) stating that Iran’s nuclear weapons program has been dormant since 2003. Its findings are both unexpected and welcome. While the political fallout from the NIE will develop over the next several days, now is an excellent time to discuss the internal machinations of the IC and its decision to make public this surprising revelation.

The dissemination of this NIE carries a significant risk for the IC. Most notably, it is an astonishing reversal of a 2005 NIE that had declared with a high degree of confidence that Iran was “determined to develop nuclear weapons despite its international obligations and international pressure.”

A reversal of this magnitude undoubtedly required a significant body of information, derived from a substantial number of human intelligence sources. The NIE, now available to anyone in Tehran, clearly signals to the Iranian regime that there are American spies in its midst. In all likelihood, the Iranians are now carefully re-vetting anyone with access to knowledge of their nuclear program. Some sources will be uncovered. They will be imprisoned or executed, and their information will no longer flow to the U.S.

In light of this fact, why did the IC release the document? In short, it did so to assert its independence from the administration. Tired of being the scapegoat for the Iraq invasion, the community may have wanted to get ahead of the game and state its position on Iran very clearly as the rhetoric heated up during the primary season. The IC’s public credibility was seriously wounded after after reports of Iraqi WMD proved to be misguided, and this document may turn out to be a significant step toward regaining it.

Some on the right have suggested that the IC is leaking information specifically to undermine George Bush and head off a military strike against Iran. Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell and Director of Central Intelligence Michael Hayden are both Bush appointees. A more plausible reading of the situation is that these career intelligence officials simply have an interest in depoliticizing their profession.

As a civilian intelligence analyst with the Navy, I had the opportunity to provide comments on high-level analytic products such as NIEs and PDBs (Presidential Daily Briefs). The coordination process, though always thorough, has been reemphasized in the wake of the politicization of intelligence that occurred during the run-up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The 2004 Intelligence Reform and Prevention of Terrorism Act created more rigorous procedures for the assessment of intelligence. As a result, NIEs are now held to a higher professional standard than they had been before the Iraq invasion. These reports, and the sources of raw intelligence from which they are derived, are vetted by everyone from desk officers to senior executives in the Director of National Intelligence’s office.

This vetting process takes time, effort, and careful deliberation over precise wording, particularly when new information leads to such a significant reversal in analytic conclusions. The aim is to convey an accurate state of affairs to the policy maker. The review and coordination process can take several years from initial inception to final dissemination. This helps explain the delay in proclaiming Iran’s nuclear-weapons program dead-or at least comatose.

This entry was posted on 12.05.2007 at 9:41 pm and is filed under National Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response.