NO FINDINGS FOR YOU….Gareth Porter, last week:
A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear programme, and thus make the document more supportive of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts of the process provided by participants to two former Central Intelligence Agency officers.
But this pressure on intelligence analysts, obviously instigated by Cheney himself, has not produced a draft estimate without those dissenting views, these sources say. The White House has now apparently decided to release the unsatisfactory draft NIE, but without making its key findings public.
The director of national intelligence said Tuesday he does not plan to make public any of the key findings of a soon-to-be-completed assessment on Iran’s nuclear program.
Mike McConnell said to do so could expose U.S. intelligence capabilities and enable Iran to change its practices.
Those are your choices. The NIE’s key findings, which are normally released, are being withheld because (a) they contain dissents Dick Cheney doesn’t like, or (b) because they might expose U.S. intelligence capabilities. If you choose (b), I have a subprime loan you might be interested in taking a look at.
