Was Mike McConnell Asleep at the Switch?
02.07.2008 - 10:50 AMThe big news story coming out of the testimony of Mike McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, seems to be the admission that three al Qaeda suspects were indeed subjected to waterboarding in 2002 and 2003. Evidently it hurt. The three men talked.
But far more significant were the DNI’s comments about the Iran National Intelligence Estimate. As summarized by the Washington Post,
McConnell said that, in retrospect, “I probably would have changed a thing or two” in the public presentation two months ago of a National Intelligence Estimate that concluded that Iran had stopped work on the design of a nuclear weapon. The estimate appeared to conflict with Bush administration rhetoric and undermined Washington’s effort to win support for tough sanctions against Iran.
McConnell said yesterday that the halt in the design work was the “least important part” of the program and “the only thing halted.” He said Iran had continued its production of fissile material, although he noted that it faces “significant technical problems” operating centrifuges. He also disclosed differences within the community about when Tehran could get enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon, with some saying 2009, others 2010 to 2015, but all recognizing the possibility that it could not come “until after 2015.”
This admission is of course a step in the right direction, but there is something immensely galling about it. The NIE was issued in November. Here we are, two months later, after an immense amount of confusion has set in around the world about America’s policy toward Iran. Why did McConnell wait until now to set the record straight?
What is more, he is correcting the record in the most insouciant and understated manner: “I probably would have changed a thing or two,” hardly addresses the fact that the NIE was so profoundly misleading about the real state of the Iranian nuclear project.
Why is McConnell acting in this way? Connecting the Dots has a theory. When the National Intelligence Council released the declassified summary of the NIE, McConnell was asleep at the switch, unaware of what his subordinates were up to, and gave his approval without realizing its import. But to admit the full gravity of the mistake, and to take corrective action, including in the realm of personnel shifts, would have been a bureaucratic and political shot in his own foot. Far better to soft-pedal things all around.
Of course, Connecting the Dots finds it difficult to believe that McConnell, who has a lifetime of outstanding and highly professional public service behind him, would put the preservation of his own image ahead of the public weal. But perhaps human nature set in and the two became confused in his own mind. If so, it would not be the first time in history that that particular human frailty set in.
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February 7th, 2008 at 11:41 AM
OK, I confess. I like Mike McConnell. He had a tremendous rep in Navy Intel in my final years of service, and was known to be a tough, smart “fleet” guy who could also swim with the (political) sharks. I’ve had my policy differences with him — namely, his advocacy of the “Clipper Chip” in the 1990s, the proposed program of permitting only “breakable” privacy software on the Web, and the lodging of keys to it with federal judges, in case NSA should need to request them in order to monitor Web activity (via a formal procedure, of course). I thought that was a bad idea, as politically wrong-headed as it was unenforceable. The pretext for proposing it was that NSA had been unable to break (decrypt) existing commercial virtual privacy software. I would have preferred the approach of figuring out how to break the commercial code, whatever that took — and this event (to my intel-cultivated mind) became a data point about how Admiral McConnell thinks.
So, that said, I don’t think he’s back-pedaling in a sly manner to do damage control on his image. What I honestly think is that his element of the intel community (IC) — what I call the “real” IC — was confronted with a professional necessity: to acknowledge new intelligence that in 2003, Iran suspended an aspect of its nuclear weapons program. It would have been inappropriate to not acknowledge that — even if that data point didn’t materially change the overall assessment. It was a valid event, and if nothing else, the reason WHY it didn’t change the overall assessment needed to be laid out.
To obtain their agreement to the tendentious construction of the unclassified NIE abstract, the hammer that was assuredly held over McConnell and the “real” IC was the public bludgeoning of the IC over 9/11 and Iraq. You can bet that the threat was implied to spin the 2003 Iran intel, through a leak, as ANOTHER INTELLIGENCE FAILURE — something that happened in 2003, for crying out loud, well before the 2005 NIE, and how could we not have known this, well, we did, but Cheney, and Rumsfeld’s people, wouldn’t believe it, and tried to cook the intel, etc, etc, etc.
Put on your Hannah Arendt, “banality of evil” thinking cap, and imagine how this “threat” could unfold not as a sinister, direct threat made by a Bond villain, but as a simple, obvious possibility lurking over the bureaucratic staffing process. Keep in mind that, as silly as it would be to interpret Iran’s nuclear activities in any way other than as a pursuit of nuclear weapons, we do not have PROOF in the form of a smoking gun. It was that lack of smoking-gun proof in Iraq that enabled Bush’s policy opponents INSIDE the IC to spin the inherent limitations of intelligence (and preemptive policy) as a “failure.”
The IC will never be backed up in a risky assessment by its political masters. McConnell knows that. But making the IC a punching bag is inevitably counterproductive. Think about it: Bush never defended or backed up the IC after either 9/11 or Iraq. Nor, in fact, should he have. He should never descend to insisting on specific interpretations of intel. But he also didn’t make a show of firing people from the IC, or running anyone through the wringer.
His political opponents, however, DID run people through the ringer. From a campaign of leaks to a predominant hand in the intelligence reorganization, Bush’s opponents exploited the intel punching bag for all it was worth.
What’s the upshot here? Bush’s opponents are costlier enemies than Bush himself — and Bush isn’t in a position to defend the IC against them. The latter has been proven clearly in the past five years.
We may say that this shouldn’t weigh with McConnell or anyone else, but we don’t walk in his shoes. Every time any American, however well-meaning, insists that he knows there was an “intelligence failure” in Iraq, he increases the likelihood that Bush’s enemies will prevail in the public dissemination of our intelligence.
February 7th, 2008 at 1:51 PM
In the opinion of James F. Hoge (Editor of Foreign Affairs), a rather well informed fellow with access to inside dope, the Iranians will have enough fissile material for at least one primitive bomb by fall.
But whatever we or the Israelis will be doing something about this, there is no percentage in raising a drumbeat of alarm in advance. The NIE disclosure has gained us some quiet and that is to the good.
It lets Iran’s economic conditions worsen and the Iranian public grow disgusted with the mullahs, without distraction. As the regime discovers itself on the world’s back burner, and becoming increasingly unpopular at home, and feeling ever more anxious to escape its isolation, it is less inclined to meddle in Iraq.
February 7th, 2008 at 9:28 PM
J. E. Dyer,
you wrote that Iran’s alleged suspension of an aspect of its nuclear weapons program didn’t materially change the overall assessment of the 2007 NIE. In point of fact, that “data point” was the main point of the NIE.
I don’t need to walk in McConnell’s shoes to know that he’s personally responsible for the agency he directs. Your claim that he was assuredly threatened with the hammer of a public bludgeoning of the IC over another “intelligence failure” doesn’t excuse his actions, because his approval of the tendentious NIE has endangered the country he’s paid to help protect. He should’ve been fired immediately.
In any case, the Establishment Media will continue to spin every intelligence report to the public as a Bush/Republican failure. The threat you think was leveled at McConnell would’ve been an empty threat. Bush’s enemies already prevailed in the public dissemination of the NIE, precisely because McConnell allowed it to downplay the threat the mullahs represent.
I know you like McConnell, but what he did was reprehensible.
February 7th, 2008 at 9:37 PM
NaCL,
I see that you’re still trying to convince people that your mullahs aren’t a threat. You absurdly cited the opinion that Iran will have a nuclear weapon by Fall as a reason against “raising a drumbeat of alarm.”
You should apply for a job with the National Intelligence Agency. You would fit right in, and it’ll be around a lot longer than your mullahs will.
February 7th, 2008 at 10:54 PM
It is one thing to acknowledge a data point in intelligence. It is another thing to distort that point out of all proportion to what it actually represented and to give it a prominence it never deserved. The IC would not be a punching bag if it hadn’t so completely earned the distinction. And it is hardly reassuring when the Director of National Intelligence is arguably more concerned with protecting his image as opposed to something as mundane as competently doing his job.
February 8th, 2008 at 8:44 AM
I think that Mullah who spoke last week summed this all up pretty well, when he decried Bush’s middle east trip and Annapolis, and suggested Bush, instead of being metaphorically handed a sword through middle eastern nations’ cooperation, should simply have been separated from his head with it.
The level of indecorous talk is as high as ever, and Iran is as obnoxiously belligerent as ever.
At such times, and with such ringing wonders as the 2004 inauguration speech from Bush in my mind, it is with sadness and disgust that I hear stories of bureaucracies and their inhabitants acting in the most drearily mediocre of ways.
Surely now is the time to step up and pay attention. If not now, when?
Surely now is a great time for a guy like McConnell to say “gosh, I kind of blew that one.. but I’ve sucked it up now and here’s the real deal.”
Instead we get yawns and business as usual.
February 8th, 2008 at 1:23 PM
Well, folks, here’s the deal: you can’t sacrifice the intelligence community for every event that gives rise to dissent in the body politic, and expect that to not distort the product you get FROM the intelligence community.
McConnell isn’t nearly as worried about himself as he is about his community. Remember, it’s not George Tenet who got the shaft after the supposed “Iraq intel failure.” It’s the community that was raked over the coals and reorganized — TO THE BENEFIT OF THOSE IN THE DNI OFFICE WHO CRAFTED THE NIE ABSTRACT ON IRAN. They moved from positions in the State Department where they did not have influence on the overall community posture, to positions in the redefined Director of National Intelligence Office, where they now do.
Intelligence does have to be held accountable for its assessments and predictions, but in the case of both 9/11 and Iraq, intelligence was instead made a convenient whipping boy for political purposes. I understand the average person doesn’t know any better whether these were “intelligence failures” or not, but universally treating them as such, and demanding heads, is the exact point of origin of the latest Iran NIE.
The national IC cannot publish anything now without the prior knowledge that its product will be held to an inappropriate standard of proof, and have potentially serious consequences for the community. It won’t matter if intel was actually wrong: it only matters who has the political power to convince the president’s policy opponents, and the people, that intel was wrong. This is quite easy to do.
It’s all very well to say, “Please, WE ALL KNOW Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon” — but not a single person here, or at any conservative forum, could argue that convincingly by the standard of proof of the president’s policy opponents. By that standard of proof, we must see and touch a brigade’s worth of actual, operational nuclear weapons with a phalanx of Iranians in formation behind it — otherwise, any assessments that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons are potential “intelligence failures” waiting to happen. This perfectly characterizes what people think of today as the “Iraq intelligence failure.” By this standard, you are busy buying in, at this very moment, to a colossal “intelligence failure” on Iran.
Until you realize that the mantra “intelligence failure” is a political concoction that has been the primary means of putting Bush’s policy opponents in positions of influence over the IC, you won’t understand the extremely high cost, to an intelligence leader, of risking more such “failure.” Such a narrative of “failure” can be manufactured against his community at any time, regardless of anything he does. And the president is not in a position to stop it.
(It will take the president and Congress acting in concert to bring the president’s policy opponents in the IC to heel — or, better, to just get rid of them. Such politicized analysts we don’t need, no matter how good their skills. But Congress finds its own relationship with the IC too profitable to join with the president in excising the IC’s “political wing.” The reason the president has no recourse on this is that members of Congress find subversion from within the IC politically useful.)
February 8th, 2008 at 11:34 PM
J.E. Dyer,
holding our unintelligent intelligence community accountable is not a sacrifice in any sense of the word. Except for them, of course.
“Universally treating (intelligence failures) as such, and demanding heads, is the exact point of origin of the latest Iran NIE.”"
Bull$&1t. The exact point of origin was a campaign to impugn the Bush administration and prevent America from destroying the mullah’s dastardly nuclear weapons program.
Mcconnell sold America out to cover his own ass and the incompetence of his career minded agency.
Once again for the deliberately obtuse: Bush’s enemies will prevail in the public dissemination of our intelligence no matter what. Excusing an incompetent national agency is not a national concern. The national Intelligence doesn’t need to be protected from criticism. America needs to be protected from terrorists, and you need to shut the f#^& up.