According to the Washington Post, a footnote in the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran which reports a halt in Iranian nuclear bomb building in 2003, shows that the main conclusions in the document came about as a result of two crucial pieces of intelligence; the now famous design for a bomb casing found in an Iranian document dump to the International Atomic Energy Agency back in 2004 and SIGINT from last summer involving conversations between high ranking Iranian generals that clearly indicated the program had been halted:
Senior officials said the latest conclusions grew out of a stream of information, beginning with a set of Iranian drawings obtained in 2004 and ending with the intercepted calls between Iranian military commanders, that steadily chipped away at the earlier assessment.In one intercept, a senior Iranian military official was specifically overheard complaining that the nuclear program had been shuttered years earlier, according to a source familiar with the intelligence. The intercept was one of more than 1,000 pieces of information cited in footnotes to the 150-page classified version of the document, an official said.
Several of those involved in preparing the new assessment said that when intelligence officials began briefing senior members of the Bush administration on the intercepts, beginning in July, the policymakers expressed skepticism. Several of the president’s top advisers suggested the intercepts were part of a clever Iranian deception campaign, the officials said.
The fact that the Administration looked in askance at this new information was prudent, wise, and exactly the right thing to do. After all, it represented a 180 degree turnabout in what we thought we knew about the Iranian nuclear program. The intel folks then vetted the information in a unique manner:
Intelligence officers then spent months examining whether the new information was part of a well-orchestrated ruse. Their effort included “Red Team” exercises in which groups of intelligence officers tried to punch holes in the new evidence, substantially delaying publication of the NIE.
I was mistaken (as was half the liberal blogosphere) when I took the Administration to task for “sitting on the report” for a year. In fact, it appears that the White House had the final report for less than a week before they themselves released it:
Last year, Congress required that key judgments from the NIE be declassified. McConnell said in November that he had no plans to issue an unclassified version, but officials said the dramatic shift in the assessment convinced him otherwise. “Since our understanding of Iran’s nuclear capabilities has changed, we felt it was important to release this information to ensure that an accurate presentation is available,” Donald Kerr, principal deputy director of national intelligence, said in a statement.
This puts the kibosh on some of my conservative friends who were speculating that this was a leak from the anti-Administration cabal at CIA/Defense/State. It was released by the Administration itself – probably to pre-empt the bureaucrats who would have leaked it anyway.
But no matter how it got out in the open, there is great unhappiness on the right. Michael Ledeen:
At this point, one really has to wonder why anyone takes these documents seriously. How can anyone in his (there was no female name on the document, nor was any woman from the IC present at the press briefing yesterday) right mind believe that the mullahs are rational? Has no one told the IC about the cult of the 12th Imam, on which this regime bases its domestic and foreign policies? Does not the constant chant of “Death to America†mean anything? I suppose not, at least not to the deep thinkers who wrote this policy document.And as for Iran’s delicate sensitivity to international pressure, just a few days ago, the European ‘foreign minister’ Javier Solana was on the verge of tears when he admitted he had been totally unable to get the Iranians to come clean on their uranium enrichment program, even though he had told them that more sanctions were in the works. Yet, according to the IC, this program–neatly described in a footnote to the “Estimate†as “Iran’s declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment—really doesn’t have anything to do with nuclear weapons. But if that is so, why are the Iranians so doggedly hiding it from UN inspectors?
Ledeen is a smart guy but he’s either being incredibly disingenuous here or deliberately obtuse. The “12th Imam” clique surrounding Ahmadinejad has been losing influence for a year. Ledeen knows full well that there are other factions in the Iranian hierarchy that are more pragmatic (if not less radical in their hatred of Israel and America) than Ahmadinejad’s true believers who have been stifling his domestic reforms and trying to rein him in on foreign policy.
But Ledeen asks a good question about why the intransigence by the Iranians with IAEA? The reason – and I base this on my reading from a variety of learned sources not any independent thinking of my own – is that Ahmadinejad has made the uranium enrichment issue a national sovereignty issue, thus garnering a tremendous amount of domestic support for continuing the enrichment program. The Iranian president seeks, above all, respect from the international community for Iran’s “achievement” in enriching the tiny amounts of uranium they have been able to process. This is where all his talk about “double standards” on the nuclear issue comes into play. He resists the IAEA because he feels their inspections intrude on what he sees as Iran’s sovereign right to develop what he calls a “peaceful” nuclear program.
Of course, the funny thing about a “peaceful” nuclear program is that the process that enriches uranium to reactor grade level is exactly the same process that enriches the uranium to weapons grade level. As I mentioned yesterday, our intelligence people believe that Iran has suspended work on weapons design, warhead and delivery systems, and other aspects of the nuclear program that could be identified as “single use.” It wouldn’t take much time or effort to get those programs out of mothballs and start them moving again.
It troubles me that both sides in the debate over this document are cherry picking information to buttress their cases. Seen in its totality, I believe this NIE is cautious (perhaps overly so), prudent – in that it takes into consideration what we might not be able to see, – and careful in drawing conclusions. It’s main point – that Iran halted its dual use program in 2003 – appears solid as does its warning that we don’t know if that is still true today. In retrospect, I was too harsh on the Administration yesterday (thanks to my new Watchers Council colleague GW of Wolfs Howling for pointing this out) when I took them to task for their rhetoric. The fact that the White House is still warning the world about possible Iranian nukes is a sound policy that this NIE does nothing to undermine.
This is especially true because the Administration was giving those warnings in the context of trying to get the UN to initiate another round of sanctions. Let’s not forget why these sanctions are in place. The Security Council voted to force Iran to stop enriching uranium until the IAEA could determine the nature of their program. The Iranians refused and sanctions were ordered. And since the Iranians have made no effort to stop since then, more sanctions were applied.
Now the Administration is going for a third round of sanctions. The reason is exactly the same regardless of whether the Iranians have an active weapons program or not; they continue to defy the UN by expanding their enrichment program. Until Iran cooperates fully and the IAEA gives them a clean bill of health (while ensuring compliance through inspections and monitoring), sanctions should continue and be expanded the longer the Iranians refuse. The conclusions drawn by the NIE do not change this situation one iota. It is the enrichment program that poses a danger to the world and must be shut down until there are adequate safeguards in place that the Iranians will not use their knowledge to build a weapon.
One aspect of the NIE wasn’t changed from the 2004 document; the fact that prior to 2003, the Iranians were on track to build a nuclear bomb. Perhaps before the left begins to accuse the Administration of overselling the danger to the world of Iranian nukes, they remember that fact. We can’t read our adversaries minds so what the future aspirations of the Iranians might be with regard to acquiring a nuclear weapon remains hidden. Therefore, prudence dictates we continue our current course (without bombing) until pressure from the Security Council and the rest of the world brings the mullahs to heel and forces them to fully cooperate with the international community in revealing their entire nuclear program and make it available for long term monitoring.
10:07 am
Good couple of posts Rick!
With regard to Iran making enrichment a “national sovereignty issue” – that is half the story.
The other half is that Iran believes that once it masters the fuel cycle and creates “events on the ground” that cannot be turned back, then the West and international community will be forced to deal with Iran and accept reality. For example, Hassan Rowhani, who became Iran’s nuclear negotiator in 2003, said in 2004:
When combined with the administration’s sweetheart nuclear deal with India (one that really plunges a dagger into the heart of nonproliferation) and most recently North Korea, Iran’s thinking here is probably justified. Here’s how Matthew Bunn, an analyst at Harvard’s Belfer Center puts it:
All of this ties in rather nicely with the recent NIE. At this point I don’t believe Iran can be deterred from continuing its work on the fuel cycle – I think that’s something we’ll likely have to learn to live with.
The key is how to prevent Iran from restarting its weapons program – a difficult task to be sure….
12:04 pm
Collecting thoughts on the NIE…
The opinions truly run the gambit over this latest bit of released (preemptively leaked?) intelligence. Enjoy.
The Corner on National Review Online – Bush and the NIEÂ Â [Byron York]
Iran’s Nuke Program Ended In 2003? – Right Wing News
Townhall…
5:07 pm
My take on the NIE is a bit different. I didn’t skip the intro pages as I came from the IC and know a bit about what typically goes into making similar documents (although not the NIE itself, the format is unmistakeable). There are a few parts in there that are, to me, extremely worrisome and unexpected from the IC, especially the organizational gatekeeper on source validity.
That told me much about what the conclusions would be even before getting to the conclusions and then the startling one is not the ones that are highly touted… apparently everyone loves the obvious and are missing the part about what the IC has no handle on at all.
I have serious problems with the outlook of the document, its construction, how it was created, vetted, the institutional gatekeeper involved and the final resulting analysis because of those things. But then I see that beauracracy influences analysis… that is how the IC works, as does the rest of the government. Still pretty amazing that they let such a large problem slip out into the unclassified portion.
1:48 am
ajacksonian,
The various collection agencies have always been gatekeepers to their own sourcing – this is hardly new. What’s different now is that the collection agencies have to tell the rest of the community details about the quality of the source which is a notable improvement. Besides, do you really want the NSA judging the validity of an INR source? Or vice-versa? Of course not.
Furthermore, I don’t see how you can have serious problems with the “outlook…construction” etc. of the NIE since you don’t (presumably) have access to the raw intelligence, nor the full 150 page classified document. If you do have such access, then perhaps I should contact your SSO….
6:43 pm
Andy – Re-read the section about the final agency to get say on what is and is not ‘reliable’ or ‘valid’ sources… the ‘clandestine services’. That is HUMINT analysis done by CIA and a few parts of DIA for Military Intelligence.
No matter how verifiable intel is by another agency, the CIA gets final say. This is not a community process but features a ‘super gatekeeper’ at the end which is not ODNI. The ODNI was put in to make sure that the community acted as such… this document and its process as it reports it, is contrary to those directives. Regular Agency level validation and withholding is still in-place… but the next part is no longer IC but singular Agency specific.
How much do you trust the CIA as editors? Because that IS new.
What gets left out is just as important as what remains, and that process can skew outlook by removing other IC work because one Agency doesn’t like the source material from another.
Because that is exactly what is happening. I don’t need to see the final 150 pages if one Agency is getting final validation as a gatekeeper and editor.
And I have no need to contact an SSO or ISSO, as I am reading only the U portion publicly released, but using my background in how the document drafting process works as I knew it vice how it is described in the NIE release. And the one part of that U release describes to me the HUMINT failure that is continuing to go on with regards to Iran and you don’t have to be read-on to know that, just an observer of the IC for the last 20 years or so. It was being talked about on newscasts back in the 1980’s. That takes no real special knowledge beyond paying attention.
Perhaps they found mind readers to figure out intentions… always a possibility!!
Great advancement in science and all that, complete with ‘Jedi mind tricks’.
The problem of ‘dot connecting’ was already difficult before ODNI was instantiated, and started to go downhill as I left the IC. This NIE tells me what the aftermath of that is. And the last two pages are pretty predictable given the lead-in.
1:49 pm
ajacksonian,
I’m very familiar with how these procedures work. Without getting into historical minutiae the NCS is now the agency responsible for HUMINT, just as the NSA is for SIGINT and the NGA is for IMINT, etc. Each one of these collection agencies is responsible for vetting its own sources – not just the NCS (which is now a separate agency that reports to the CIA).
And the CIA is not the final gatekeeper and editor. That was true prior to 2004, but is not true anymore.
Finally, your criticisms are long on allegation and short on evidence. It seems to me you base it largely on the fact that you don’t like the conclusions and then extrapolate to find flaw in the HUMINT portion where, again, you don’t have any evidence.