This just in....



In what is probably the most important news story in the last eight years, the Wall Street Journal European Edition reports on the overthrow of the Bush hawks, how a false informant corrupted the entire weapons of mass destruction U.S. policy, the U.S. about-face on Iran, the triumph of the diplomats and staff, and most importantly, it shows the inner workings of the battle for truth in the American intelligence community.

Who is behind the overturn of the Bush hawks and the coup? Skull and Bones, probably.

This story just appeared on the front page of the Wall Street Journal European Edition today. You've got the scoop, the skinny, the hush-hush, from Beetnews. :]]



In U.S. reversal on Iran, a victory for diplomats
By Jay Solomon And Siobhan Gorman
The Wall Street Journal European Edition
Front Page
January 14, 2008


As U.S. President George W. Bush arrives in Saudi Arabia today, America’s Arab and Israeli allies have been buzzing about the recent sea change in Washington’s perception of Iran. The December report by the U.S.’s top spy office stating Iran had abandoned its effort to build nuclear weapons was one of the biggest U-turns in the recent history of U.S. intelligence.


Behind the scenes in Washington, it marked a reversal of a different sort: After years in which Bush appointees and White House staff won out on foreign-policy matters, career staffers in the intelligence world had scored a big victory.


The authors of the Iran report— officials in the intelligence and diplomatic corps—are among the same people who were on the losing side of the Iraq and Iran debates during the first Bush term. In 2002, some argued that Iraq didn’t have an active nuclear-weapons program. They were sidelined by the more-hawkish foreign-policy strategists on the Bush team.


Now, the more-cautious intelligence camp is grabbing the reins. The power shift can be seen in other areas where U.S. policy appears to be softening. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is supporting cultural exchanges and direct dialogue with Pyongyang. The White House recently invited a Syrian delegation to a Middle East peace conference. At the same time, longtime government officials across Washington are taking on key posts once held by Bush loyalists.


In the case of the Iran report, the about-face was made possible in part by a 2004 restructuring that gave intelligence chiefs more autonomy. New procedures for vetting and authenticating reports also helped insulate analysts from White House involvement.


Critics of the report, including European and Arab diplomats and hawkish U.S. legislators and strategists, believe it is politically motivated payback. By focusing on new intelligence that reveals that Iran dismantled its weapons program in response to international pressure, they say, the authors are making a case for diplomacy rather than military action. Less prominent in the report is a second key finding— that Iran is rapidly moving ahead to develop a nuclear-fuel cycle.


“This all smells of policy validation,” says David Wurmser, who served as Vice President Dick Cheney’s top Middle East adviser until this September. “These guys were State Department bureaucrats.…It is hardly surprising that they now use their new positions to try to prove they were right.”


The Iran National Intelligence Estimate, as the report is called, has also complicated President Bush’s approach to the Middle East. During the president’s trip to the region this week, one task has been to reassure Arab and Israeli allies that the U.S. has a consistent policy toward Iran.


Yesterday, in Abu Dhabi, Mr. Bush sought to rally Arab states against Tehran, saying in a speech: “Iran’s actions threaten the security of nations everywhere.”


The report “really confused many people in the Gulf,” says Bruce Reidel, a former Middle East expert at the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Council.


Senior officials at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the umbrella organization that coordinates the U.S.’s 16 spy agencies and that oversaw the report, say payback wasn’t a factor. They defend the report as a righting of the ship after the Iraq intelligence failures.


Hundreds of officials were involved and thousands of documents were drawn upon in this report, according to the DNI, making it impossible for any official to overly sway it. Intelligence sources were vetted and questioned in ways they weren’t ahead of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.


Thomas Fingar, 62 years old, is one of the leading architects of the Iran report. A veteran State Department official, Mr. Fingar helped lead the office that argued in 2002 that evidence of Iraq’s nuclear program was faulty. He is now a senior official at the DNI.


Of the backlash against the report, Mr. Fingar says, “a lot of it is just nonsense. The idea that this thing was written by a bunch of nonprofessional renegades or refugees is just silly.”


Tensions between career intelligence and diplomatic officers on one side, and the White House and Pentagon on the other, trace back decades.


The most recent conflict traces back to President Bush’s first term when the development of U.S. policy toward the “axis of evil”—Iraq, Iran and North Korea—was still in its early stages. At the time, Mr. Fingar servedasthe deputychief of theState Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, crafting analysis for Washington’s diplomatic corps.


A China expert and onetime gymnast, Mr. Fingar began his career as an academic at Stanford University and was the director of its U.S.-China Relations Program. His colleagues describe him as enraptured by the East, displaying in his office Asian art and photos of his younger days in East Asia.


In 2002, Mr. Fingar vigorously quizzed his analysts’ assumptions on Iraq, according to people who took part in the process. He particularly liked running “red-teaming” exercises where competing groups sought to expose flaws in the bureau’s judgments. Mr. Fingar told top State Department officials, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell, what his analysts had concluded: Saddam Hussein didn’t have an active nuclear-weapons program. In particular, they disputed evidence cited by the White House relating to Iraq’s purchase of aluminum tubes, purportedly for use in making weapons-grade uranium.


Mr. Powell ultimately broke from his analysts’ beliefs, arguing before the U.N. Security Council in February 2003 that Mr. Hussein was actively seeking a nuclear weapon.


Mr. Fingar’s department’s Iraq position, a lonely one, infuriated top Bush administration officials, say current and former U.S. officials.


The two sides clashed on other issues. One of Mr. Fingar’s State Department colleagues, Vann Van Diepen, for example, repeatedly battled with John Bolton, the close ally of Vice President Cheney who served as the State Department’s top counterproliferation official at the time.


One big battle was over the export of technologies from China to Iran and other regimes that could be used in developing nonconventional weapons and ballistic-missile systems. Mr. Bolton considered China’s action government-sponsored proliferation and pushed for sanctions. Mr. Van Diepen disagreed, arguing that Beijing didn’t have the ability to control all the players inside China, say U.S. officials who worked with both men.


Mr. Bolton says the rift grew so wide he designated a subordinate to monitor Mr. Van Diepen’s work. Toward the end of President Bush’s first term, the State Department began to shrink the scope of Mr. Van Diepen’s responsibilities.


Now the National Intelligence Officer for Weapons of Mass Destruction and Proliferation for the DNI, Mr. Van Diepen is a co-author of the Iran National Intelligence Estimate.


Mr. Van Diepen declined to comment on the dispute with Mr. Bolton’s office. His former boss at the State Department, John Wolf, says Mr. Van Diepen never sought to undermine Bush administration policy on weapons proliferation.


“Vann Van Diepen wasn’t anti-President Bush, he was anti-John Bolton,” says Mr. Wolf. “Hedidn’t believe we could do things irrespective of the law and our treaty obligations.”


With the reconfiguration of the intelligence landscape in late 2004, Mr. Fingar moved to the newly created DNI, along with John Negroponte, another career diplomat who became the spy agency’s first director. Mr. Fingar became director of the National Intelligence Council, which coordinates the writing of all NIEs among the U.S.’s spy agencies.


Mr. Fingar was tasked with implementing many of the changes called for by Congress. This included putting new safeguards into the system to authenticate reports’ sources and to prevent intelligence being cherrypicked to support previously developed theories. One of the Iraq NIE’s biggest failures was that it drew heavily on an Iraqi defector nicknamed “Curveball” who never met with American intelligence officials and later proved to be a fabricator.


Under these new systems, officials from the U.S.’s principal spy agencies, such as the CIA and National Security Agency, were required to compare every piece of intelligence they collected with how it was reflected in the report. They signed forms stating that the information from their sources was accurately reflected. Analysts also examined a half-dozen alternate explanations for the facts they had gathered to test their conclusions.


Another significant change, Mr. Fingar says, has been reevaluating “our judgments and the sourcing used in previous estimates,” rather than just trusting the conclusions of the old intelligence reports.


Mr. Van Diepen, as a co-author of the Iran report, drew on thousands of documents and sources in writing the final estimate and cooperated closely with 20 other officials in the last stages, say people involved in the process. Representatives from all 16 spy agencies ultimately had to sign off on this final version. Outside experts, who were expected to challenge its conclusions, were given a day to analyze the report for flaws.


The result was that the White House was essentially locked out of the process. This marked a big change from the years leading up to the Iraq war, when Mr. Cheney and his top aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby made repeated visits to Langley to query analysts about their findings on Iraq’s weapons capabilities.


Through the summer and fall of 2007, as rumors leaked, officials in Mr. Cheney’s office and on Capitol Hill grew increasingly concerned about the report’s possible conclusions, according to people working at the White House and on Capitol Hill. White House and DNI officials say President Bush first got notice from DNI chief Mike McConnell in August that significant new intelligence had emerged on Iran.


DNI officials met with White House staff a week before the report’s release to go over the sources behind their assessment. Intelligence officials involved in this process say it wasn’t a forum to invite changes.


Knowing the report would probably leak, and given the importance of its conclusions, the White House decided to make public the key conclusions. Most of the report is still classified.


People in Mr. Cheney’s office saw the Dec. 3 announcement as a death blow to their Iran policy.


Few publicly question the underlying intelligence behind the report. But a number of critics are challenging the analysts’ conclusions. Some counterproliferation experts and diplomats see Iran’s efforts to develop a nuclear-fuel cycle as a more important assessment than the revelation that Tehran stopped seeking to develop actual weapons. They say once the fuel cycle is accomplished, weapons can be developed in a matter of months.


“The elephant that’s in the room is being ignored,” says Rep. Brad Sherman of California, the Democratic chairman of a House committee on nuclear proliferation.


“You couldn’t read the key judgments [of the report] and not assume that this was intended to change policy,” says Mr. Bolton. “It shredded the Bush administration policy.”


Mr. Fingar warns against judging the whole report based on the 2μ pages that were declassified. He says it is more than 140 pages long and has nearly 1,500 source notes.


As for Mr. Bolton’s critique, “it didn’t say what he wanted it to say, I guess,” Mr. Fingar says.

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Did you know that the new National Intelligence Estimate has a part that is only based on hearsay, public opinion, and news that is reported by a left biased media? How realistic and calculated is that?

Secondly, It is the simpliest part of a Nuke to weaponize it.
The actual weapons program that the Iranians have stopped can be restarted after they have enriched uranium and they could have a bomb within a few months.

So if they stopped their weapons program, it has not delayed them very much. The hardest part is enrichment and that is the part that the Iranians are working on now at full force.

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Red Bull Air Racing

Gas price by zip at Seti

that is the part that the Iranians are working on now at full force.

Where is your proof? And btw, where are all those Iraqi WMDs? ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

that is the part that the Iranians are working on now at full force.

Where is your proof? And btw, where are all those Iraqi WMDs? ;)

You should try to succeed at being a comedian, but you would most likely blow that too!

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Red Bull Air Racing

Gas price by zip at Seti

You should try to succeed at being a comedian, but you would most likely blow that too!

Not because I'm not funny, but because the 'money changers' don't like my brand of humor, and have decided that nobody else should either... ;)

(ARROGANCE : My one and only true hate in this world.)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

Did you know that the new National Intelligence Estimate has a part that is only based on hearsay, public opinion, and news that is reported by a left biased media? How realistic and calculated is that?

Secondly, It is the simpliest part of a Nuke to weaponize it.
The actual weapons program that the Iranians have stopped can be restarted after they have enriched uranium and they could have a bomb within a few months.

So if they stopped their weapons program, it has not delayed them very much. The hardest part is enrichment and that is the part that the Iranians are working on now at full force.

Two things

First, the myth of the left bias in media. The media is owned by the corporate world and the only voices from the left are those who are not as far right as the Bushtards but still way right of center.
If the media were really left of center would we not be reading pro-union articles and seeing support for universal single payer healthcare from all the media sources?
Sorry mate, but the biased lefty media crap doesn't hold up under even the simplest test.

Second, we Canadians can enrich uranium. When should we be expecting the tanks to roll across the border?

When did your government gain the moral right to pre-emptively attack other nations on a hunch that some future event may or may not happen?

Can I go beat the hell out of my neighbor because he owns antifreeze and at some point in the future could use it to poison my dogs?

...

So if they stopped their weapons program, it has not delayed them very much. The hardest part is enrichment and that is the part that the Iranians are working on now at full force.

...

Can I go beat the hell out of my neighbor because he owns antifreeze and at some point in the future could use it to poison my dogs?

Good points gentlemen, both of you.

Robert Waite, let me answer you this way: No, of course not. But...

Canada has a history. It is not an aggresive country. The same cannot be said be said about Iran. Is it surprising that many citizens in western democracies are nervous? The attack on the WTC did take place.

I understand the point of your question, but the analogy is not strong enough, for me. You asked

"Can I go beat the hell out of my neighbor because he owns antifreeze and at some point in the future could use it to poison my dogs?"

The question should be (I think):

"My neighbor owns lots of fertilizer. Recently he's said nasty things to me and has bought blasting caps. That makes his fertilizer a potential bomb that can kill my whole family. Can I go beat the hell out of him?"

To which I add these questions: "If not, how do I make sure he never makes a bomb? How do I get rid of the blasting caps?"

If "The price of freedom is eternal vigilence" as Thomas Jefferson said, what do we do against clearly hostile and perhaps aggressive countries?

When you consider United States' concerns about nuclear proliferation, to some extent it is the author of its own misfortune. The U.S. created and used the first nuclear weapon. They created world military dominence with it. Is it surprising that every country wants one?

Having opened Pandora's Box, how do we keep the lid on it?


But the importance of this story to me is less the issue of Iran, than the "What Goes On" in the intelligence community, that we so much rely on. I think Messrs. Van Diepen and Fingar were right in instituting procedures that focus on truth and confirmation in analysis. I think they're right in shutting out the White House from visiting them every weekend to try to shape their analysis. When you think about it, they have actually saved Iran from any U.S. attack for the duration of what's left of the lame duck Bush administration.

The staunchly consevative New Republic magazine complains that this Iran report is also based on a single informant (so they claim) and one that has not personally been questioned by Messrs. Van Diepen and Fingar.

But some measure of oversight is needed on the intelligence community. Remember that the all important CIA was born in WWII as the OSS, a misinformation as well as a counterespionage department. The CIA continues those traditions to this day.

My point is this: we can use misinformation and mischief to confound our enemies, but never give the intelligence community the power to misinform or confound us.

That is why I support Messrs. Van Diepen and Fingar in beating back the Mr. Boltons of the White House. The keys are: proof of truth and oversight by the Senate.

IMHO.

---

...

So if they stopped their weapons program, it has not delayed them very much. The hardest part is enrichment and that is the part that the Iranians are working on now at full force.

...

Can I go beat the hell out of my neighbor because he owns antifreeze and at some point in the future could use it to poison my dogs?

Good points gentlemen, both of you.

Robert Waite, let me answer you this way: No, of course not. But...

Canada has a history. It is not an aggresive country. The same cannot be said be said about Iran. Is it surprising that many citizens in western democracies are nervous? The attack on the WTC did take place.

I understand the point of your question, but the analogy is not strong enough, for me. You asked

"Can I go beat the hell out of my neighbor because he owns antifreeze and at some point in the future could use it to poison my dogs?"

The question should be (I think):

"My neighbor owns lots of fertilizer. Recently he's said nasty things to me and has bought blasting caps. That makes his fertilizer a potential bomb that can kill my whole family. Can I go beat the hell out of him?"

To which I add these questions: "If not, how do I make sure he never makes a bomb? How do I get rid of the blasting caps?"

If "The price of freedom is eternal vigilence" as Thomas Jefferson said, what do we do against clearly hostile and perhaps aggressive countries?

When you consider United States' concerns about nuclear proliferation, to some extent it is the author of its own misfortune. The U.S. created and used the first nuclear weapon. They created world military dominence with it. Is it surprising that every country wants one?

Having opened Pandora's Box, how do we keep the lid on it?


But the importance of this story to me is less the issue of Iran, than the "What Goes On" in the intelligence community, that we so much rely on. I think Messrs. Van Diepen and Fingar were right in instituting procedures that focus on truth and confirmation in analysis. I think they're right in shutting out the White House from visiting them every weekend to try to shape their analysis. When you think about it, they have actually saved Iran from any U.S. attack for the duration of what's left of the lame duck Bush administration.

The staunchly consevative New Republic magazine complains that this Iran report is also based on a single informant (so they claim) and one that has not personally been questioned by Messrs. Van Diepen and Fingar.

But some measure of oversight is needed on the intelligence community. Remember that the all important CIA was born in WWII as the OSS, a misinformation as well as a counterespionage department. The CIA continues those traditions to this day.

My point is this: we can use misinformation and mischief to confound our enemies, but never give the intelligence community the power to misinform or confound us.

That is why I support Messrs. Van Diepen and Fingar in beating back the Mr. Boltons of the White House. The keys are: proof of truth and oversight by the Senate.

IMHO.

Beethoven, you're correct when you state Canada has a history. We are the only nation to invade the US and burn down the White House.
We've been, historically, the source of more hostility and death than Iran has to America.

I've seen no evidence of Iranian or Iraqi involvement in the horrors of Sept 11 but plenty of evidence pointing toward the Saudis.

My dispute is against the idea that America has a right to pre-emptive strikes based on possibilities of future events.

I see no war plans against China even though one of their top generals stated that they would rain down fire on American cities over the Taiwan issue if America were to support the Taiwanese.
Surely this is more of a threat than some pissant country like Iran.

The really sad part of this is that the Iranian government was one of the first to express their outrage and sympathy after the attacks on Sept 11.

Surely this is more of a threat than some pissant country

Thou shalt not use thy ants name in vain! ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

Did you know that the new National Intelligence Estimate has a part that is only based on hearsay, public opinion, and news that is reported by a left biased media? How realistic and calculated is that?

Secondly, It is the simpliest part of a Nuke to weaponize it.
The actual weapons program that the Iranians have stopped can be restarted after they have enriched uranium and they could have a bomb within a few months.

So if they stopped their weapons program, it has not delayed them very much. The hardest part is enrichment and that is the part that the Iranians are working on now at full force.

Two things

First, the myth of the left bias in media. The media is owned by the corporate world and the only voices from the left are those who are not as far right as the Bushtards but still way right of center.
If the media were really left of center would we not be reading pro-union articles and seeing support for universal single payer healthcare from all the media sources?
Sorry mate, but the biased lefty media crap doesn't hold up under even the simplest test.

There is your mistake, assumption a corporation is conservative.
Many Presidents and CEOs can be liberal and then the policies of the corporation are liberal.

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Red Bull Air Racing

Gas price by zip at Seti

There is your mistake, assumption a corporation is conservative.
Many Presidents and CEOs can be liberal and then the policies of the corporation are liberal.

You may find a sweet, ripe peach floating in a cesspool but that doesn't change the rest of the contents.

There is your mistake, assumption a corporation is conservative.
Many Presidents and CEOs can be liberal and then the policies of the corporation are liberal.

You may find a sweet, ripe peach floating in a cesspool but that doesn't change the rest of the contents.

Interesting concept, sounds to me like you don't make exceptions for ripened fruit floating in cesspools.

...and yet when we look at your stance concerning the War on Terror, you want to make exceptions for the alleged pieces of fruit floating in that cesspool of terrorism. No involvement in 9/11...ok, how about the Iran Hostage Crisis of '79? Make no mistake about it, the middle east has been waging war on western culture for multiple decades and it's time folks like you woke up to that fact.

You ask what gives us the right to keep a country like Iran from going nuclear? Humanity...

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the middle east has been waging war on western culture for multiple decades

There's that 'dyslexia' thing again... ;)

---

It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

There is your mistake, assumption a corporation is conservative.
Many Presidents and CEOs can be liberal and then the policies of the corporation are liberal.

You may find a sweet, ripe peach floating in a cesspool but that doesn't change the rest of the contents.

Ha Ha, if you called it a sweet peach then it must be true, and now that I found it, I will gladly let you eat it. :)

Second point which is obvious, but you overlooked. OK! when has Canada threaten the US to wipe it off of the map, even though Canada enriches uranium? :)
Think about what would happened, if Canada was threatening any country of removing them from the map and not with an eraser. :)

[qoute]
The really sad part of this is that the Iranian government was one of the first to express their outrage and sympathy after the attacks on Sept 11.
[/qoute]
There surely were more people dancing in the streets than expressing outrage.

Off on a tangent which is obvious to everybody except to union leaders, all corporations create jobs for workers.
There isn't any union that I know of that every hired anybody that created the revenue within to pay the worker, but they have forced corporations to layoff workers.

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Red Bull Air Racing

Gas price by zip at Seti

threatening any country of removing them from the map and not with an eraser.

My fathers favorite quote: 'I put you in this world and I can take you right back out of it'...

Should I have taken aggressive action against him? Ho hum ho hum... ;)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

threatening any country of removing them from the map and not with an eraser.

My fathers favorite quote: 'I put you in this world and I can take you right back out of it'...

Should I have taken aggressive action against him? Ho hum ho hum... ;)

What's your point or should I ask your dad?

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Red Bull Air Racing

Gas price by zip at Seti

What's your point

My point: Running around the world murdering innocent people over words is irrational... ;)

(Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.)

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It may not be 1984 but George Orwell sure did see the future . . .

What's your point

My point: Running around the world murdering innocent people over words is irrational... ;)

(Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.)

Who is murdering innocent people for any reason? Get your facts straight. Don't use democratic talking points. :)

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Red Bull Air Racing

Gas price by zip at Seti

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BOINC Wiki . . .

Science Status Page . . .

[...]
No involvement in 9/11...ok, how about the Iran Hostage Crisis of '79? [...]
the middle east has been waging war on western culture for multiple decades

There's that 'dyslexia' thing again... ;)

Indeed, I'm sure BrainSmashr meant 1953 when referring to an earlier US/Iranian conflict.

btw, if 1979 is to be used as a demonstration of Iranian hostility to the US, just how many of those hostages were killed during the crisis?

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I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that ...