By Shane Harris
National Journal
WASHINGTON — “You will be disappointed,” Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, told a gathering of journalists in Washington on Nov. 13. U.S. spy agencies were putting the finishing touches on a National Intelligence Estimate about Iran's nuclear intentions and capabilities, which included new leads that the agencies had been vetting since spring. But departing from recent practice, McConnell said, “I do not intend to release unclassified key judgments” of the NIE, those heavily edited yet potentially telling morsels of analysis that might ultimately show how close the United States is to a war with Iran (see GSN, Oct. 29). “We have probably done a thousand of these” NIEs, he said. “We have done unclassified key judgments for maybe three. So we created an expectation that we do this, because we did it previously.” And that was a bad idea, McConnell said, with some passion. For starters, even the “sanitized” version of an NIE could compromise vital sources and methods, he said, because the target of the estimate is, of course, going to read the document. Second, “I don't want to have a situation where the young analysts” — whom McConnell guards with particular devotion because he was once one of them — “are writing something because they know it's going to be a public debate or political debate. They should be writing it to call it as it is.” McConnell, whom a longtime colleague describes as having “not a political or manipulative bone in his body,” also stated he would “make every effort” to prosecute anyone who leaked the NIE. Then, he vowed (twice) to resign if the intelligence was “cherry-picked in an inappropriate way” by government officials. Things changed dramatically in the three weeks after McConnell's public denunciation of leaks and declassification. On Dec. 3, McConnell and his aides reversed that decision and released the unclassified key judgments of the NIE on Iran (see GSN, Dec. 3). Try as McConnell might to keep the lid on the new estimate, his lieutenants were influenced by the political realities of intelligence these days. “They thought it would leak and be distorted, and they thought they'd get ahead of that,” said one former senior intelligence official close to the deliberations. “They decided it was better to put out a clean set of key judgments.” Vice President Cheney went so far as to say that officials expected to lose control of some classified material. “There was a general belief — that we all shared — that it was important to put it out, that it was not likely to stay classified for long, anyway,” Cheney told The Politico on Dec. 5. “Everything leaks.” The leak-prevention strategy was a stark departure from the guidelines that McConnell had set out, both in November and a month earlier, when he issued this official policy: “The possibility that the [key judgments] or other positions of an estimate will be leaked is not a sufficient reason for preparing unclassified [key judgments].” In a briefing with reporters after the NIE was released, a senior intelligence official acknowledged that declassification “obviously represents a departure from [McConnell's] guidance.” The banner headline of the key judgments — “that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program” — put the intelligence community precisely where McConnell didn't want it to be: in the middle of a ferocious political and policy debate in which sources and methods of the intelligence on Iran, as well as the analysis, are being openly discussed, exposed, debated, and, yes, cherry-picked to suit a range of agendas. Indeed, even though the NIE does not say that Iran poses no nuclear threat, the key judgments on areas besides the weapons program have had to compete with the dramatic top-line assessment. Because the new estimate upends its predecessor, made in 2005, and has undercut any nuclear-related pretext for a U.S. bombing of Iran, the political and ideological dispositions of the analysts who wrote the NIE are, predictably, under scrutiny. Within days of the key judgments' release, former Bush administration officials and neoconservative icons mounted a full-scale attack on McConnell's lieutenants, some of whom had long careers in the State Department and have, the critics contend, historically underestimated Iran. These critics characterized the NIE as the lieutenants' way of cutting off Cheney and the president on their presumed path to war with Iran — a contention that wasn't refuted by senior intelligence officials' repeated assertions that Iran's decision to stop its program in 2003 and to keep it shuttered resulted directly from international pressures and sanctions. Indeed, intelligence officials have been careful not to assert that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was the key motivator for Iran's change of plans. Whether McConnell's aides meant to pre-empt the White House or not, the conclusion is undeniable: The intelligence community is at odds with President Bush's forceful rhetoric on Iran. Since the NIE was released, McConnell has been notably absent from the public fracas. His deputy, Donald Kerr, a veteran nuclear weapons expert, has given the intelligence community's only two on-the-record statements about the estimate. McConnell was out of the country when the key judgments were released. Around Washington, rumors persist that McConnell threatened to resign over the issue. It's not clear, however, whether he staked his tenure on the NIE being released or withheld, or whether he saw any cherry-picking by the White House, but the gossip is one more measure of just how political the release of this document has become. Observers point out that in the month preceding the NIE, Bush warned that Iran's nuclear ambitions could lead to “World War III,” and Cheney, four days later, gave a bellicose speech reminiscent of the run-up to war with Iraq over its weapons programs. The White House already knew by then, at a minimum, that the intelligence community was vetting potentially groundbreaking intelligence on Iran that could change the NIE. Perhaps under pressure to back up their bold new claims on Iran, senior officials have gone further, giving on-background press interviews in which they catalog the streams of intelligence that led the analysts to change their nuclear conclusions — purloined laptop computers loaded with weapons diagrams; notebooks and intercepted phone calls from high-ranking officials; and, as reported by the Los Angeles Times this week, a clandestine operation called “Brain Drain,” in which the CIA helped mid- and top-level Iranian nuclear experts flee the country. Unless officials are trying to affect the Iranian government's actions through a massive disinformation campaign, it would seem that the intelligence community has set aside McConnell's concerns about sources and methods. “I'm shocked by the level of public discussion,” said a former senior intelligence official who worked on Iranian issues for many years, adding, “I don't see much good that comes from releasing NIEs.” Kerr has said that the release “was coordinated in discussion with senior policy makers,” but that the intelligence community “took responsibility for what portions ... were to be declassified.” Officials weighed “the importance of the information to open discussions about our national security” against protecting sources and methods, he said, and “felt it was important to release this information to ensure that an accurate presentation is available.” Still, only a dramatic turn of events would have led McConnell to abandon his policy of not making NIEs public, several former officials who know him said. One former high-ranking official involved in clandestine operations said that in more than 30 years in the intelligence business, he had never seen a key judgment change so dramatically so fast — indicating that the new intelligence that officials picked up amounted to a veritable “smoking gun.” “Keep in mind, this thing had been built up, which is somewhat unusual for an NIE,” said another former senior official, who has also worked on Capitol Hill. The document was months behind schedule, widely anticipated, and focused on one of the top foreign-policy issues of the moment. “I think this was an extraordinary circumstance,” the former official said. Expressing concern over the public airing of sources, a Senate staffer said that the NIE “has certainly been sucked into a political debate,” and that McConnell is clearly concerned about the effect that the fallout might have on analysts. “For that, we will have to wait and see,” the aide said. “I still think that he simply had no choice. There was no way this would stay secret, and he didn't want to be accused of trying to bury it. I think he held his nose and let it go.” Many intelligence professionals concur. And in the NIE's release, they see signs not of an outright insurrection against the Bush administration but of a reassertion by the intelligence community of its ability to influence policy — public or otherwise. McConnell's team is hardly backing down in the face of the neocon onslaught. Last Saturday, Kerr shot back at the NIE's critics in an unusual and terse public statement. Labeled “In response to those questioning the analytic work and integrity of the United States intelligence community,” Kerr's statement said that the agencies' “task ... is to produce objective, ground-truth analysis. We feel confident in our analytic tradecraft and resulting analysis in this estimate.” So there.
By Elaine M. Grossman
Global Security Newswire
WASHINGTON — Any future international deal that aims to lock in Iran’s 2003 decision to halt efforts to build a nuclear weapon would probably trigger an Israeli political upheaval, one regional expert said yesterday (see GSN, Nov. 19). The United States has consistently backed Jerusalem’s view that Iran poses an existential threat to Israel. However, ongoing international efforts to negotiate limits on Tehran’s nuclear program could shift regional politics and force Israel to accept Iran’s ongoing uranium enrichment, said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, during a panel discussion. “Israel right now is in a state of strategic paralysis,” Parsi said at the event, sponsored by the Center for American Progress. The nation’s longtime approach has been to “prevent any U.S.-Iran deal because of the fear that it would come at its expense,” he said. If such an accord is struck, it would “most likely entail some level of enrichment on Iranian soil,” the Iran expert said. “And for the Israelis, this [poses] a great, great difficulty to accept.” The concern is “understandable,” Parsi said, given that Iran is operating about 3,000 enrichment centrifuges that could produce weapon-grade uranium. However, with a new U.S. intelligence assessment that Iran ended its nuclear weapons program four years ago but could resume it at any time, the “chessboard has changed,” he said (see GSN, Dec. 3). Despite the new developments, Israeli politics have remained on “autopilot,” said Parsi, author of a new book, “Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran and the United States.” In Jerusalem, it is “as if Iran does not already have 3,000 centrifuges and already knows how to enrich uranium,” he said. Parsi urged Israeli leaders to adopt a “Plan B” that accounts for the “reality” that Iran would engage in uranium enrichment and even that someday the Persian nation might develop a nuclear weapon. He acknowledged the shift could have dramatic ramifications inside Israel and ultimately for the Jewish state’s relations in the region and around the world. “This will likely be the end of a lot of Israeli politicians’ careers,” he said, noting that many have staked their reputations on a view of Iran as an implacable adversary. However, Parsi noted that a small number of former Israeli diplomats and intelligence leaders have begun to voice perspectives that contradict the conventional wisdom and to say things “that Israelis rarely say officially: Iran is rational. Iran can be deterred. Israel can even handle a nuclear Iran because Israel has a second-strike capability.” Moderating the event, the center’s Joseph Cirincione asked whether it might be possible for the United States and its European allies to persuade Iran to forsake uranium enrichment altogether, or if they must accept that some level of activity would continue. “The idea that we would be able to completely end their program has basically not been viable for the last year and a half,” Parsi responded. “We just have to be realistic. We’re not in that position of power to be able to enforce on the Iranians that solution.” He added that Iran has “walked through every red line that the U.S. or Israel and the international community have put on them. And the price that they have paid so far is quite negligible.” Parsi urged that the West “take a step back and adopt new and more realistic objectives,” which would likely involve continued Iranian enrichment to meet civil energy needs. However, he said, Washington and its partners should ensure “that whatever [nuclear] program they have does not end up being a weapons program. That is definitely still achievable.” Panel speaker Barbara Slavin, a USA Today reporter and author of another new book on Iran, said the only way to prevent Iran from building a bomb could be “to change the security environment around Iran in such a way that they don’t feel so paranoid.” Tehran’s paranoia is somewhat justified at this juncture, she said. “After all, given ‘axis of evil’ and all the regime-change rhetoric they’ve heard from Washington, why shouldn’t they want nukes?” Slavin asked. “So I don’t think anything can stop them from going that far” unless it is clear that renouncing nuclear weapons would allow them to achieve even more valuable objectives, she said. Those might include “economic relations with the rest of the world” and broader inclusion in the “international community,” she said.
South Korean Foreign Minister Song Min-soon said North Korea’s apparent unwillingness to acknowledge a uranium enrichment program has created a “bump” in efforts to eliminate the Stalinist state’s nuclear complex, Yonhap reported today (see GSN, Dec. 12). Pyongyang agreed in October to disable three key facilities and issue a full declaration on its nuclear activities by the end of 2007 as the next steps in the denuclearization process. There have been rumblings recently that the declaration might not address U.S. allegations that North Korea operated an enrichment effort alongside its known plutonium-based nuclear weapons program. Top South Korean nuclear negotiator Chun Young-woo met yesterday with Chinese envoy Wu Dawei, who is expected next week to conduct nuclear talks in Pyongyang. “Vice Minister Wu will visit North Korea next week and the North’s disclosure of its nuclear programs is becoming a key issue. Ambassador Chun and Vice Minister Wu will try to reach a joint message for North Korea regarding its nuclear declaration,” according to an official in Seoul. Chun said his meeting with Wu was focused on the “challenge” of ensuring that Pyongyang provides a full description of past nuclear efforts. “We discussed how we will overcome this issue of disclosing North Korea’s nuclear programs and I asked Vice Minister Wu to exercise his leadership as the chairman of the six-nation talks to find a solution to this problem,” he said. Top U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill, in a trip last week to Pyongyang, apparently was unable to persuade North Korean officials to address the uranium enrichment effort in the declaration, Yonhap reported (Yonhap I, Dec. 14). A Chinese Foreign Ministry official said yesterday a date had not been set for Wu’s trip to North Korea, the Associated Press reported. He said that disablement of the facilities at the Yongbyon nuclear complex is “smoothly under way” but ducked questions on whether it would be finished before 2008. Officials from six-party talks nations have said that technical challenges might delay completion until 2008 (Associated Press I/Yahoo!News, Dec. 14). North Replies to Bush LetterMeanwhile, the United States has received a response to U.S. President George W. Bush’s first-ever personal letter to North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, AP reported. In the letter to “Mr. Chairman,” Bush called on Pyongyang to meet its pledge to produce a full declaration of its nuclear activities (see GSN, Dec. 7). In a reply passed through its U.N. office, the North said it “appreciates President Bush’s letter, will fulfill its obligations and expects the U.S. to perform what it has to do,” according to Yonhap. It was not immediately known if Kim himself prepared the message, which did not address the nuclear disclosure issue (Associated Press II/Washington Post, Dec. 14). A report updated this week by the U.S. Congressional Research Service counters claims that North Korea has not been involved with terrorist organization for two decades, Yonhap reported. Pyongyang has sought to be removed from the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism as a reward for denuclearization. “The State Department continued to declare that North Korea had not committed a terrorist act since 1987, but contrary reports from reputable sources described recent North Korean programs to provide arms and training to Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka, two groups on the U.S. list of international terrorist organizations,” the report states. Complete dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear complex is not expected to conclude before the Bush administration leaves office, the report states. “This scenario appears to have influenced the Bush administration to delink total dismantlement as a primary condition for removal of North Korea from the terrorism list and to link removal with lesser North Korean steps … particularly ‘disablement’ of the Yongbyon plutonium nuclear facilities and a declaration of its nuclear programs,” according to the report. Washington also appears to lean toward disconnecting North Korea’s removal from the list from resolving the issue of its abduction of Japanese citizens, in order to press forward on the nuclear issue, the report states. “Delinking the Japanese kidnapping issue and not addressing the report of North Korean military support of Hezbollah and the Tamil Tigers could damage the integrity of the list of state sponsors of terrorism, damage U.S. relations with Japan, and limit the ability of the United States to deal with what appears to have been into 2007 a rising level of North Korean support for international terrorist groups,” the Congressional Research Service said (Yonhap II, Dec. 13).
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf issued rules yesterday to clarify that he is in charge of the National Command Authority, the body responsible for command and control of the nation’s nuclear arsenal, the Press Trust of India reported (see GSN, Dec. 11). Previous rules identified the “head of the government” or the prime minister as NCA chairman, but Musharraf’s latest edict specifically gives that role to the president, according to the Press Trust. Other members of the authority include the foreign minister, the defense minister, the interior minister, the three service chiefs, the chairman of the joint staffs committee and the director general of the Strategic Plans Division. The authority was established in 2000 to address growing concerns that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons could be at risk of terrorist theft (Press Trust of India, Dec. 13). Such concerns have grown in recent years, triggered by Pakistani difficulty in constraining al-Qaeda activity in Afghan-Pakistani border regions and by failed assassination attempts against Musharraf, said two nuclear experts writing in Arms Control Today. Nevertheless, they conclude that the command authority has worked well to improve control over Pakistan’s arsenal. “Although the concerns about Pakistan’s nuclear security during the current political crisis raised questions about the adequacy of the system, there have not been any examples to date of systemic failure,” says the article by Kenneth Luongo and Naeem Salik. Luongo is executive director of the Partnership for Global Security and Salik is a former Pakistani general who served on the National Command Authority’s staff. “In fact, the weapons and facilities have been secure throughout the crisis, providing a measure of assurance that the last decade’s improvements are working.” “These actions should build confidence in the international community that the Pakistani government is very serious about nuclear security and reducing the possibilities for proliferation. The evolution of this security system will need to continue well into the future, but a substantial foundation now exists on which these future improvements can be built,” they add (Luongo/Salik, Arms Control Today, Dec. 2007).
China’s envoy to the United Nations called yesterday for a two-pronged strategy that would involve penalties and diplomacy to end the nuclear standoff with Iran, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Dec. 13). Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya said a recent U.S. National Intelligence Estimate’s conclusion that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 has had a definite effect on Beijing’s stance toward new sanctions. The six major world powers handling diplomacy with Iran continue to debate how to define the “incremental” increase in sanctions they are pursuing, according to the Chinese envoy, who reiterated that the U.N. Security Council is unlikely to vote on a new resolution until 2008. On Tuesday, political directors from China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States discussed a draft sanctions resolution against Iran in a 90-minute telephone conversation the officials said highlighted the split between them. Wang called the talk “a good discussion,” but added that “there are still some differences over the elements of the draft” resolution. “And, of course, taking into account the new situation, some members among the six propose that there should be two tracks: the Security Council resolution and also the six should think about, as a strategic plan, what to do next for a diplomatic solution,” Wang said. “You have to add something to the two previous resolutions, but what to be added to the new text, and also taking into account how they can revitalize this diplomatic initiative, the talks,” he said, adding that the political directors planned to speak again “after the new year.” U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said Washington continues to view Iran’s nuclear program as a threat despite the new intelligence report’s findings because Tehran has refused to halt its uranium enrichment program, which could produce material for a nuclear weapon. “We were moving relatively close to an agreement before the NIE issue, but now we’re working for people to find their bearing once again as to what the NIE was and what the NIE was not (so) that we could get back on track to where we were before,” Khalilzad said. U.S. officials said Monday that the draft sanctions resolution under review included measures to isolate the Iran Revolutionary Guard’s elite al-Quds force for illicit weapons trafficking as well as Bank Melli, a major Iranian bank covered in unilateral U.S. sanctions announced in October (Edith Lederer, Associated Press I/Google News, Dec. 13). British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told lawmakers yesterday that the need for international sanctions against Iran remains in spite of the U.S. intelligence assessment. “The world is right to insist by sanctions that Iran comes back into line,” Brown said (Associated Press II/Google News, Dec. 14). Meanwhile, Tehran reached an agreement with Russia yesterday on a schedule for completing Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant. Details on the timeline for the facility’s completion are expected to be made public later this month, according to Russian media reports. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said after meeting yesterday with Manouchehr Mottaki, his Iranian counterpart, that Iran must cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency in order to clarify its nuclear ambitions to the international community. Interfax quoted Lavrov as saying that defusing the nuclear standoff is possible “solely on the basis of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, IAEA rules and principles and, certainly, with Iran proving its right to the peaceful use of nuclear energy" (Jim Heintz, Associated Press III/International Herald Tribune, Dec. 13).
U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said after meeting Wednesday with the top U.S. representative to North Korean denuclearization talks that the Stalinist state has likely ended any support for a suspected Syrian nuclear program, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, Nov. 14). “I came away with the sense that whatever, if anything ever had occurred in the past, it is not occurring now, and I think our negotiators feel that with good confidence,” Boxer said following a session with Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill and other U.S. senators. Hill said after the closed-door session that the United States must ensure “that proliferation issues, whether they have existed in the past or not, certainly don't exist in the present or in the future.” Hill declined to discuss Syria specifically, and the Bush administration has not issued any statements on recent speculation that Damascus has been developing a nuclear program with North Korean assistance. Israel on Sept. 6 conducted an air strike against a Syrian facility that some U.S. officials later identified anonymously as a North Korean-style nuclear site. The attack raised concerns in the U.S. Congress that North Korea might have provided nuclear weapons development expertise to Syria, a nation the United States has deemed hostile. Both North Korea and Syria are on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism. Syria has issued several statements denying it is developing a nuclear site while North Korea has maintained it is not proliferating technical knowledge needed for nuclear weapons development (Foster Klug, Associated Press/International Herald Tribune, Dec. 13).
The United States and China this week offered strategies to officials from 15 nations on preventing and responding to a nuclear or radiological terrorist incident, the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration said (see GSN, Oct. 22). The workshop in Beijing involved field exercises, briefings on U.S. emergency response capabilities and sharing of best practices by the nations in attendance. “This was a great opportunity for the United States, China and many other countries to learn from each other the best ways to respond to a possible terrorist attack,” NNSA Associate Administrator for Emergency Operations Joseph Krol said in a press release. “It’s always reassuring to see how many different countries are part of the global war on terror” (U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration release, Dec. 14).
| 
Back to top
