The Iran Nuke NIE--Politics Or Good Work?

Having spent a good chunk of years as a close student of the whacky world of intelligence, the Geek must profess himself mystified and baffled by the bloviation and hyperventilation crowding the mainstream media and blogosphere over the new NIE regarding Iran's nuclear weapons program.

Sure the new NIE is antipodal to the 2005 effort.

So what?

Get a grip on this. An intelligence estimate is never fixed in stone for all eternity--unless, of course, the intelligence community is totally out to lunch.

There are many, to the Geek at least, self-evident reasons for this reality. First, new information surfaces. Second, the analysts may revisit old information with new eyes. Third, the target may change its intentions, actions, capabilities.

In the present case all three factors were present.

It has been acknowledged that new information regarding the Iranian program emerged over the summer and early fall. The success of the (formerly) covert program to encourage defections from the Iranian nuclear effort which started in 2005 has been obliquely acknowledged. Finally, the new information including the success of the "brain drain" operation encouraged reopening the old files and looking at their content with newly opened eyes.

Not surprisingly, this interlocking set of considerations occasioned an analytical product at great variance with the previous one. For this the intelligence community deserves high marks and thanks from We the People. The community did its job--and did it well.

To do the job, and, more importantly, to release an unclassified summary, required the executives of the sixteen agencies involved ignore command pollution from the neocon ninnies in and around the White House. To the further credit of these executives, the political sensitivities of the current administration and its allies were ignored so the product might be released.

Despite the fact that the NIE in no way discounts the threat Iran will or might present to the US and other countries in the not too distant future, neocon ninnies have taken it under attack. Senator John Ensign (R-NV) has said that he will introduce a bill establishing a bipartisan commission to assess the NIE and report back to Congress in six months. Take a look at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/06/AR2007120602457.html.

The model is the 1995 effort by congresswallahs to discredit a controversial NIE which concluded there was no likelihood of any country beyond the major nuclear powers (Russia and China) obtaining a missile capability which would directly threaten the US before 2010. The Republicans didn't like this. (Neither did a posse of neocon Democrats.) The result was the formation of a commission under the command of Donald (Don't You Be Dissing Me!) Rumsfield. To the shock of no one with an IQ above single digits, the Rumsfield Commission concluded that the NIE was wrong as a soup sandwich, muttering darkly to the effect that virtually every country other than Somalia could possess arsenals bulging with ICBMs before fifteen years were out.

(We are now only two years from the deadline year. How many countries beyond the old nuclear club members have ICBM capability? How many are projected to demonstrate one within the next twenty-four months?)

The intelligence community did not play politics with the 1995 NIE. Neither did it make policy. It did its job. Did it well. Very well when it is considered that the time frame was lengthy.

The intelligence community is not playing politics with the new Iranian nuke NIE. Neither is it making policy. It is doing its job.

The neocon ninnies howled back in 1995. They are howling now. John Bolton, a man noted for his ability and willingness to call upon others to fight, bleed and die, has termed the NIE a "quasi-putsch." http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-bolton9dec09,1,233789.story?coll=la-headlines-world. If that isn't politicising the NIE, what is?

Norman Podhoertz, the Gramps of all neocons, is equally intemperate even though he eschews Bolton's colorful language. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/06/AR2007120602457.html. But, the former editor of Commentary and current advisor to Rudy Giuliani, has long been in favor of bombing Iran. It is not surprising that he would be darkly suspicious of any piece of paper arguing that there was no immediate need for this action--particularly one signed off by all sixteen agencies of the intelligence community.

The politics have come. Not from the analysts or executives of the intelligence community. No. Not them. The source of politicization has been those whose ox has been gored. The folks who were so wrong on Iraq. The neocon ninnies.

Intelligence estimates can be and have been wrong. The Geek thought those regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction back in 2002 were of the grilled watermelon sort. He believed the same of the 2005 view of Iran's nuclear weapons program.

The latest estimate doesn't cloy in the Geek's nose. But, the reactions of Bolton, Ensign, Podhoretz and the "experts" at the American Enterprise Institute do.