THE PARLOUS STATE OF AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE….American experts have apparently concluded that North Korea sold nuclear material to Libya for use in their (now dismantled) bombmaking program. That’s disturbing news, but so is this tidbit farther down in the Washington Post’s account:
“This was not a conclusion reached by the CIA” or the intelligence bureau at the State Department, said the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the intelligence matter. “This was the lab technicians from DOE.”
He said this gave added credence to the report because it was based not on a murky intelligence assessment but on hard data.
It’s pretty pathetic that administration officials now feel like they have to go out of their way to insist that U.S. intelligence wasn’t involved in something if they want it to have any credibility at all.
It’s also worth noting the cheap shot thrown at the State Department’s intelligence agency, which actually has a very good track record. Shouldn’t it have been “not the CIA or the Pentagon”?
