The Times of London has a useful backgrounder on the National Intelligence Estimate, from Cheney's wrath to who tipped the balance towards defusing the alleged threat from Iran. Not all agree with its conclusions, of course.
The declassified summary of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran not only ran contrary to its insistence two years earlier that Iran was “determined” to develop nuclear weapons, but flew in the face of accepted facts among western intelligence agencies.
Bush wound up with egg on his face, of course, and Cheney...
When Dick Cheney, the vice-president and leading Iran hawk, was briefed on the about-turn a couple of weeks ago, there was a “pretty vivid exchange” with intelligence officials in the White House, one participant told The New York Times.
According to an intelligence source, Cheney sought to block the NIE’s release, but was overruled.
How did our intelligence agencies get the new information? Looks like it just walked in the door -- or was helped through the door renditionally.
...There was an infusion of new information about Iran that persuaded all 16 American intelligence agencies to back the NIE.
Israeli sources told The Sunday Times that a key part of the jigsaw was supplied by General Ali Reza Asghari, 63, a former Iranian deputy defence minister who is believed to have defected after disappearing from his hotel room in Istanbul in February.
The Iranian regime accused Washington of kidnapping him, but western intelligence sources say he is in America of his own accord. His debriefing was so secretive that information went directly to the director of the CIA, rather than to senior officials. “People who would normally know, and should know, are completely out of the loop,” said one informed source.
American intelligence agencies also received a trove of information last summer, including intercepts of Iranian phone calls by GCHQ, the British listening station, which suggested that Iranian military officials were angered by a decision in late 2003 to halt a project to design nuclear weapons. The suspicion that the revelations might be a complex hoax were discounted.
The Times report injects at the very least an element of caution. Leaving aside rants of the furious neocons and Cheneyites, a substantial number of experts agree the NIE is way too optimistic. Paul Pillar, former CIA-ite and one of those responsible for the 2005 report, doesn't see that much difference between NIE 2005 and NIE 2007.
“It’s described as a dramatic 180-degree reversal but it’s not. The key ‘pacing element’ about when Iran is going to get a nuclear weapon is the uranium enrichment issue and that hasn’t changed,” he said.
As before, the NIE suggests “with moderate confidence” that the Iranians could be capable of producing enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon by 2010-2015.
“You can differ with the president on his policy direction but the issue remains the same,” said Pillar. He maintains that the intelligence community has “shot itself in the foot” by oversimplifying the debate.
