Redstate

By Pejman Yousefzadeh Posted in National Security — Comments (1) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

Consider the latest declassified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) entitled "The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland." I read it today with interest. Some thoughts.

There is a great deal of a whole heck of a lot more below the fold. Jump over . . .

1. It is amazing that it actually takes "several months" to produce this kind of document. My sense is that it can be written up by a reasonably well-informed person outside of government in about an hour or so. I am evidently not alone in thinking this. I recognize the need to canvass the intelligence community for dissents but I still don't think that it should take a trimester or so to write up an NIE. Your government at work.

2. There is no mention of specific chatter, leads or other particular references to information that helped shape the writing of the NIE. I am sure that this is because the intelligence community wants to protect sources and methods but one would hope that national security principals (the President, the Vice President, etc.) and their briefers have access to the aforementioned specific data. I know that if I were in their shoes, I would want that access firsthand and I would want to sift through the data.

3. The NIE says nothing that would not be anticipated by a reasonably well-informed person outside of government. However, its release and the attention surrounding it convince me anew that . . . well . . . intelligence analysis is not an objective science. Rather, it is an agenda-driven art.

I assume that you took the time to read that entire story. I posit that it is representative of the way in which the NIE has been covered today. Now, I guess that for different people, different parts of the NIE stick out. The part that stuck out for me was the reference to the fact that AQI was "the most visible and capable affiliate" of al Qaeda and that al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) is "the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack the Homeland." Contra the Times story, of course, nowhere in the NIE does it say that the war in Iraq "spawned" al Qaeda. Even if you want to argue that the war in Iraq did spawn AQI, you cannot say--as the Times did--that the NIE makes such an assertion. Indeed, nothing even resembling that comment appears in the NIE.

So a meme not even mentioned in the NIE is being spread through the mainstream media as accepted gospel and the NIE is cited as a source for that meme. Meanwhile, the actual commentary in the NIE--that AQI is the most dangerous affiliate and that it wants to strike at the United States directly--is receiving relatively short shrift. Additionally, there is no intelligent commentary whatsoever seeking to explain away the likelihood that if al Qaeda didn't exist in Iraq, it would likely have its resources diverted to a place like Indonesia or Somalia. Nor is there any discussion or commentary as to why having AQI's resources diverted to either Indonesia or Somalia or any other country is preferable to having those resources in Iraq.

4. I trust that I am not the only person disappointed concerning the misrepresentations and omissions discussed in Point 3 above.

5. The Times story completely downplays language in the NIE discussing how al Qaeda's efforts have been curbed . . . while--again--making up claims about how the NIE says the Iraq war "spawned" AQI. Apparently, writers at the Times don't think that we can actually get access to and read the NIE.

6. The NIE makes the point that an attack on the Homeland becomes more likely "as 9/11 becomes a more distant memory." Yeah. Tell me about it. Of course, memories can be made fuzzy not just through the passage of time, but also through the repeated commission of false statements.

7. The Times makes no reference to the threat presented by Hezbollah, as indicated in the NIE. Was this not important? Why not?

8. The Times makes no reference to the threat presented by terrorist sites as indicated in the NIE. Was this not important? Why not?

Maybe from now on, people should just read NIEs and other such documents before reading commentary on those documents. That will allow people to make up their own minds concerning what the documents say or don't say. And news outlets will be under greater pressure to get their commentary right if they know that their readers and viewers will look directly to the source to see whether or not matters are being represented fairly and accurately.

Just a thought.