I resisted the urge to comment on the release of the NIE document on Iran's nuclear program because the initial responses were certain to be ... predictable.
Everyone has seized upon the opportunity to engage in a little gratuitous (but also well-deserved) adminstration bashing, and even congratulating the intelligence community for finally "getting it right" before we started another war. And there was a lot of patting themselves on the back when the NIE agreed with their long-held views.
However, you need to understand that this unclassified draft of the NIE is generally very disturbing. Its very existence bespeaks a serious deterioration in our intelligence-gathering and intelligence-analysis functions.
Take a walk with me for a moment in the sausage factory.
You should know first that if you had the complete, classified version of the DIE in your hands right now, you'd discover that better than 95% of the material therein was gathered from open sources. With the exception of hard operational military intelligence during an ongoing campaign, this is almost always the way things are. (It does matter, in this case, that many of those open sources for this report were in Farsi, Arabic, or Pashtun, but nobody in the government is going to stop you from learning those languages.) Moreover, skilled analysts with access to that 95% of the material can usually make damn good guesses about the "shape" and "fit" of the missing puzzle pieces without even seeing them.
That's why numerous public-access "think tanks" have been reporting a similar conclusion for the past two years. (No, even though they are out there on the net, I'm not going to give you the links. If you are serious about finding this stuff, you will be able to find them for yourself.)
In other words, this is not news. There have been numerous indications of changing Iranian priorities in its nuclear program since late 2002/early 2003, including the movements of key personnel, orders for equipment placed on the open market, reports within professional societies, etc. etc. So you have to wonder about the timing of this release.
The second thing you have to realize is that, despite the recommendations post-9/11 of experts in the field, the US has yet to embrace the concept of "bottom-up" intelligence gathering, which (in the shortest possible comic-book definition) means having the available source material drive the questions used to drive further collection efforts that are used to drive the creation of working hypotheses that are then tested for predictive ability against emerging real-time data. (Huh? Believe me, that's about as simple as you can make it.)
What we pursue instead, to this day, is a fairly rigidly compartmentalized process of developing interpretive models based on priorities assigned by senior officials to answer specified questions. We then look for data to support (or much more rarely to rebut or modify) these interpretive models. There is a strong tendency to "Cherry-pick" supportive data and ignore counter-theory information. The overall model is generally the product of a centralizing uber-agency that farms out the production of different parts to different offices, all of which respond almost as sub-contractors whose continued employment depends upon keeping the boss happy.
Despite the vast increase in surveillance capacity and some incredible ground-breaking work in both data mining and network theory, our fragmented intelligence community continues to operate in almost exactly the same ineffective fashion that it did pre-9/11.
Most people do not want to admit this, but the evidence is overwhelming. Get hold of the unclassified NIE and see if you can tell me which of the 16 cited agencies that "signed off" on this document is actually accountable for the accuracy of the predictions. You won't be able to. Check the grammar of the document carefully for "weasel words" that actually hedge the final conclusion to the point of nonsense.
Please also note that at least 6--possibly more--of these 16 agencies have absolutely nothing to do with gathering information relevant to Iran's nuclear program. They signed off as a required gesture of institutional loyalty rather than as an indication of informed agreement.
Even if all 16 agencies had relevant roles in this process, you should find that unanimity disconcerting. The nature of intelligence analysis is such that there has to be--HAS TO BE--both dissenting opinions and counter-conclusive evidence. Intelligence estimates are exactly that--estimates. The more certainty applied to an estimate, the more outright political the document will be.
What does this all mean? I know it is going to make a lot of people who read this unhappy, but we don't actually know a hell of a lot more about Iran's nuclear program than we did last week. That's because the difference between a weaponized capability and a civilian program depends almost entirely on a few very small, very key details. The NIE is disturbing because it completely punts the question (at least in the version WE get to read) of developing the capacity for "dirty" bombs, purchasing technology or weapons outright from former Soviet republics, or even explain how much we know about conversion pre-planning.
It is quite possible that Iran is not and does not intend to build nuclear weapons. Yet the report suggests strongly that up until 2003 the mullahs WERE pursuing such a course. If they are not now, we need to think about the implications of that change.
It is quite possible that Iran has already purchased both weaponized fuel and delivery systems on the international black market. Ukraine and Belarus in particular have been suspected for years of selling such material and it is incredibly hard to track.
It is quite possible that Iran continues to work on a "virtual" conversion program for weaponized fuel and delivery systems, which--if properly done--would be completely invisible to outside observers.
Even if Iran does not have an active nuclear program (and I'm a skeptic about their expertise if not their good intentions) and has no realistic capacity (other than outright purchase) to field such weapons in the next decade, Iran has not become one whit less territorially aggressive or religiously fanatic, and it remains determined to replace both the US and Saudi Arabia as the primary regional power in that region of the Middle East.
(Of course, being an iconoclast, I often think we should just give them what they want. It would be the worst possible thing to do to them.)
More to the point, the NIE is discomforting because its existence and form indicates strongly that the US has NOT addressed the pre-existent flaws in our intelligence gathering capacity, has not de-politicized the process, and has not managed to achieve any significant level of prognostication that experts working only with open sources could not (and have not already) achieve.
So even if--or "especially if"--this NIE confirms your own views about Iran, you should continue to be very uncomfortable with the ingredients being put into your sausage.
Everyone has seized upon the opportunity to engage in a little gratuitous (but also well-deserved) adminstration bashing, and even congratulating the intelligence community for finally "getting it right" before we started another war. And there was a lot of patting themselves on the back when the NIE agreed with their long-held views.
However, you need to understand that this unclassified draft of the NIE is generally very disturbing. Its very existence bespeaks a serious deterioration in our intelligence-gathering and intelligence-analysis functions.
Take a walk with me for a moment in the sausage factory.
You should know first that if you had the complete, classified version of the DIE in your hands right now, you'd discover that better than 95% of the material therein was gathered from open sources. With the exception of hard operational military intelligence during an ongoing campaign, this is almost always the way things are. (It does matter, in this case, that many of those open sources for this report were in Farsi, Arabic, or Pashtun, but nobody in the government is going to stop you from learning those languages.) Moreover, skilled analysts with access to that 95% of the material can usually make damn good guesses about the "shape" and "fit" of the missing puzzle pieces without even seeing them.
That's why numerous public-access "think tanks" have been reporting a similar conclusion for the past two years. (No, even though they are out there on the net, I'm not going to give you the links. If you are serious about finding this stuff, you will be able to find them for yourself.)
In other words, this is not news. There have been numerous indications of changing Iranian priorities in its nuclear program since late 2002/early 2003, including the movements of key personnel, orders for equipment placed on the open market, reports within professional societies, etc. etc. So you have to wonder about the timing of this release.
The second thing you have to realize is that, despite the recommendations post-9/11 of experts in the field, the US has yet to embrace the concept of "bottom-up" intelligence gathering, which (in the shortest possible comic-book definition) means having the available source material drive the questions used to drive further collection efforts that are used to drive the creation of working hypotheses that are then tested for predictive ability against emerging real-time data. (Huh? Believe me, that's about as simple as you can make it.)
What we pursue instead, to this day, is a fairly rigidly compartmentalized process of developing interpretive models based on priorities assigned by senior officials to answer specified questions. We then look for data to support (or much more rarely to rebut or modify) these interpretive models. There is a strong tendency to "Cherry-pick" supportive data and ignore counter-theory information. The overall model is generally the product of a centralizing uber-agency that farms out the production of different parts to different offices, all of which respond almost as sub-contractors whose continued employment depends upon keeping the boss happy.
Despite the vast increase in surveillance capacity and some incredible ground-breaking work in both data mining and network theory, our fragmented intelligence community continues to operate in almost exactly the same ineffective fashion that it did pre-9/11.
Most people do not want to admit this, but the evidence is overwhelming. Get hold of the unclassified NIE and see if you can tell me which of the 16 cited agencies that "signed off" on this document is actually accountable for the accuracy of the predictions. You won't be able to. Check the grammar of the document carefully for "weasel words" that actually hedge the final conclusion to the point of nonsense.
Please also note that at least 6--possibly more--of these 16 agencies have absolutely nothing to do with gathering information relevant to Iran's nuclear program. They signed off as a required gesture of institutional loyalty rather than as an indication of informed agreement.
Even if all 16 agencies had relevant roles in this process, you should find that unanimity disconcerting. The nature of intelligence analysis is such that there has to be--HAS TO BE--both dissenting opinions and counter-conclusive evidence. Intelligence estimates are exactly that--estimates. The more certainty applied to an estimate, the more outright political the document will be.
What does this all mean? I know it is going to make a lot of people who read this unhappy, but we don't actually know a hell of a lot more about Iran's nuclear program than we did last week. That's because the difference between a weaponized capability and a civilian program depends almost entirely on a few very small, very key details. The NIE is disturbing because it completely punts the question (at least in the version WE get to read) of developing the capacity for "dirty" bombs, purchasing technology or weapons outright from former Soviet republics, or even explain how much we know about conversion pre-planning.
It is quite possible that Iran is not and does not intend to build nuclear weapons. Yet the report suggests strongly that up until 2003 the mullahs WERE pursuing such a course. If they are not now, we need to think about the implications of that change.
It is quite possible that Iran has already purchased both weaponized fuel and delivery systems on the international black market. Ukraine and Belarus in particular have been suspected for years of selling such material and it is incredibly hard to track.
It is quite possible that Iran continues to work on a "virtual" conversion program for weaponized fuel and delivery systems, which--if properly done--would be completely invisible to outside observers.
Even if Iran does not have an active nuclear program (and I'm a skeptic about their expertise if not their good intentions) and has no realistic capacity (other than outright purchase) to field such weapons in the next decade, Iran has not become one whit less territorially aggressive or religiously fanatic, and it remains determined to replace both the US and Saudi Arabia as the primary regional power in that region of the Middle East.
(Of course, being an iconoclast, I often think we should just give them what they want. It would be the worst possible thing to do to them.)
More to the point, the NIE is discomforting because its existence and form indicates strongly that the US has NOT addressed the pre-existent flaws in our intelligence gathering capacity, has not de-politicized the process, and has not managed to achieve any significant level of prognostication that experts working only with open sources could not (and have not already) achieve.
So even if--or "especially if"--this NIE confirms your own views about Iran, you should continue to be very uncomfortable with the ingredients being put into your sausage.
Comments
At this point I wouldn't put it past either our State Dept or NSC.