Let’s talk about projection and see if we can find two mistakes in the following passage:

“The United States is not going fall victim to a surprise attack because of some typos in a RAND study. But we will fall victim to another surprise attack if don’t focus on the fact that the problem facing our intelligence community is not technology but severe shortcomings in the selection of analysts themselves.”

Answers:

“The United States is not going [sic. ‘to’] fall victim to a surprise attack because of some typos in a RAND study. But we will fall victim to another surprise attack if [sic. ‘we’] don’t focus on the fact that the problem facing our intelligence community is not technology but severe shortcomings in the selection of analysts themselves.”

The Lesson:

Luke 6:42, “Or how can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye.”

Gabe,
Thought you’d like this. You are mentioned in the article.

Along with the over qualified Monica at the Pentagon too.

(Actually, we referred to bin Laden at CENTCOM as “Waldo,” as in “Where’s Waldo?”)

The GENOA-II brief is an amusing walk down memory lane. There actually is something to using technology to achieve better analysis. GENOA’s evolution included positive outcomes from collaborative, cross-agency analysis schemes (e.g., routine networked collaboration), and from data-mining/data-sifting programs that (as with ABLE SENTRY) revealed connections and correlations in terrorist networks that humans, unaided, would not find in a lifetime. There’s some real there there.

The problem with guys like Scheuer and Immerman isn’t analysis, it’s political leanings and spin. I keep using the 2007 Iran NIE to illustrate this, because it works so well. There WAS a discrete, definable event in 2003 that amounted to Iran pulling back from the more detectable elements of its nuclear weaponization program. Receiving the report of this in 2006 helped analysts make sense of a LACK of indicators along these lines after 2003. (There is never anyone waving a big red flag that reads, unambiguously, “OK, we’ve stopped — or STARTED — weaponizing now!” Until an actual detonation, analysts have to interpret collateral indicators, or — more difficult — the absence of them.)

The context of this 2003 event could be presented in different ways. The way I would present it would be as follows: we know from IAEA inspections and our own intelligence how much farther Iran has progressed in uranium enrichment since 2003. Progress has been significant — even dramatic. We know from our own intelligence that Iran has not ceased to develop and test ballistic missiles (the delivery systems for nuclear warheads). We also know that Iran could have resumed some portion of its weaponization effort — making a functioning warhead — since 2003. If Iran moves slowly enough, and carries the cost of doing much of the work underground, a significant segment of this effort can remain undetected. We also know, from Iran’s posture with IAEA and the EU-3, that Iran has every intention of exploiting the negotiation process to gain time — as we have seen with its persistence in perfecting uranium enrichment through the series of negotiations and inspections. We can thus reasonably suspect that some weaponization activity has resumed, and that it warrants the greatest risks we can take, to gain better intelligence on it. We can still expect Iran to be capable of detonating a nuke as early as 2009, and have a functioning weapon by 2015. We can, finally, conclude that in suspending its weaponization effort in 2003 (and simulating a more cooperative stance with IAEA that fall), Iran was most likely reacting to the US invasion of Iraq.

(Let us also recognize that in spite of all we are certain that we know about Iran’s uranium enrichment and ballistic missile programs, if Iran had long enough to clean out its storage and R&D sites, we could be made guilty of an intelligence failure for our current certainty that any of the activity is related to WEAPONS. North Korea and Iraq have taught that lesson well.)

As we know, of course, the 2007 NIE presented a different context for the 2003 data point. But this is not because analysts don’t know about all the elements of the context I just outlined. Analysts haven’t failed to recognize those indicators. This is NOT the “failure” they are accused of perpetrating before 9/11. Instead, even though anyone with Google can unearth all the context I have outlined, the IC leadership chose to either ignore or barely mention these factors, in making the 2003 data point public. The only ANALYTICAL difference between my summary and the NIE’s is the conclusion about WHY Iran suspended weaponization in 2003. Since we actually don’t know why, and we’re all making deductions about that, no one can be taken to the woodshed for having an analytical difference of opinion.

In only a single sense can the NIE be denounced for literally getting a point of substance wrong, and that is its assertion that Iran was reacting, in 2003, to diplomatic pressure. We don’t know for sure what Iran was reacting to, but John Bolton pointed out, shortly after the NIE’s executive summary was released, that almost no diplomatic pressure was being applied to Iran in the relevant time frame. The diplomatic PRESSURE (threats of sanctions) was applied afterward. Bolton piece here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/05/AR2007120502234.html

Our greatest problem with intelligence today is not that we are literally missing indicators or failing to recognize their potential import, although that does happen (and prudent, well-directed steps to minimize it are always appropriate). Our problem is that valid and essentially adequate intelligence findings are being spun, for politics’ sake, from inside the IC. The event that has made that not only more possible but inevitable is the 2005 IC reorganization, which gave us a DNI office staffed by Bush’s old enemies from State and CIA.