As Slate’s Fred Kaplan explained a while back, a [tag]National Intelligence Estimate[/tag] ([tag]NIE[/tag]) “is not an ordinary report. It marks the one occasion when the Central Intelligence Agency warrants its name, acting as a central entity that pulls together the assessments of all the myriad intelligence departments, noting where they agree and where they differ.” Two years ago, the CIA produced an NIE for the administration on Iraq, but it was spiked — the document didn’t toe the party line and emphasized inconvenient realities.
The intelligence community is prepared, and desperately wants, to do a new NIE on the current state of Iraq, but as Harper’s [tag]Ken Silverstein[/tag] noted today, there’s considerable resistance.
…I’ve learned from two sources that some senior figures at the CIA, along with a number of Iraq analysts, have been pushing to produce a new NIE. They’ve been stonewalled, however, by John [tag]Negroponte[/tag], the administration’s Director of National Intelligence, who knows that any honest take on the situation would produce an NIE even more pessimistic than the 2004 version. That could create problems on the Hill and, if it is leaked as the last one was, with the public as well.
“What do you call the situation in [tag]Iraq[/tag] right now?” asked one person familiar with the situation. “The analysts know that it’s a [tag]civil war[/tag], but there’s a feeling at the top that [using that term] will complicate matters.” Negroponte, said another source regarding the potential impact of a pessimistic assessment, “doesn’t want the president to have to deal with that.”
No, of course not. Why should the president be inconvenienced by an authoritative-but-problematic intelligence report? Why spur a policy discussion based on updated information? Why identify what is clearly a civil war if the label might cause political difficulties for Republicans?
When the topic of a new NIE was first raised, the Directorate of National Intelligence agreed to consider the matter, but advocates heard nothing back. They raised the topic again several months ago and were told that Negroponte was still mulling over the matter. Since then, there’s been no indication that the DNI intends to authorize a new NIE. “He’s not going to allow [analysts] to call the situation warts and all,” said one source. “There’s real angst about it inside.”
A third source, a former CIA officer who served in Iraq, said he had no direct knowledge of Negroponte blocking the NIE but that it jibed with past practice. “The NIE is a crucial document . . . that tells you how to tweak your policy,” he said. “That’s hard to do if you don’t want to look at it.”
It’s par for the course when it comes to the Bush gang — “don’t bother me with facts; I know what I’m doing” — but it’s a reminder that all the talk about the administration approaching foreign policy crises with a new sense of realism is total nonsense.