The CIA has posted a defense of its controversial October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on its Web site. (In case this one is discovered a month from now as "news," I'll mention that I saw a report of it in El Mundo.)
Written by analyst Stuart Cohen, it defends the NIE against a number of criticisms which have been levelled against it. I'll have to leave it to someone who knows way more about the politics of that particular dispute to sort through exactly who his analysis may be protecting and who criticizing.
But I was particularly struck by this passage:
<< The NIE judged with high confidence that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of the 150 km limit imposed by the UN Security Council, and with moderate confidence that Iraq did not have nuclear weapons. These judgments were essentially the same conclusions reached by the United Nations and by a wide array of intelligence services—friendly and unfriendly alike. The only government in the world that claimed that Iraq was not working on, and did not have, biological and chemical weapons or prohibited missile systems was in Baghdad. >>
Since it turns out that Saddam Hussein's regime seems to have been telling the truth about that, it highlights what a spectacular failure of intelligence the whole "weapons of mass destruction" claims were. Now, part of the article seems directed in particular at denying that the widely-reported direct intervention of Vice President Cheney with CIA analysts had any effect on the final product.
But I'm not sure which is scarier. The idea that the CIA let Cheney pressure them into lying about this. Or the idea that the CIA blew it completely on their estimates.
Either way, the situation will not be improved by further politicizing the analysis of intelligence, as some of the hardline hawks criticizing the CIA over this are trying to do.
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