Friday-Lunch-Club
WINPAC—the CIA’s clearinghouse for data on various weapons and delivery systems—sent a new report to Congress this week that amounts to one of the intelligence community’s few sustained public statements on Iran’s drive to acquire nuclear weapons since the widely noticed (and discredited (by Israel...)) November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate. This report is not to be confused with a new NIE, which is in the works and said to be ready for release sometime this month. This, rather, is a more routine document, required by law and mostly treated as pro forma.That partly explains why the report got so little attention. But it is not without interest.Recall that the crux of the 2007 NIE was the assertion that, in 2003, Iran halted its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons and had not since restarted them. That finding was based solely on the Intelligence Community’s judgment that Iran had stopped working on “weaponization,” i.e., designing bombs and acquiring and making their
components. .......The prior WINPAC report, which covered calendar year 2008 and was released in early 2009, repeated the 2007 NIE’s language almost word for word, despite the DNI’s disavowal of a year prior. The latest one, which dropped on Tuesday of this week and covers 2009, makes no mention whatsoever of weaponization. Were transcripts of McConnell’s remarks finally circulated to the drafters?Whatever the reason, the omission is curious. If WINPAC now judges that the 2007 NIE was wrong (an inescapable conclusion, incidentally), why not just say so? Wouldn’t it help restore some of the Intelligence Community’s lost credibility? Allied intelligence services (Read Mostly ISRAELI...) never believed the NIE and were embarrassed by it. Wouldn’t a signal to them that we have regained our senses be useful?
Posted by G, Z, or B at 9:55 AM
Uprooted Palestinian
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