American Intelligence Community Foundering

Little wonder Bush had such a hard time with the CIA - it is thought that a shadow organization existed in the CIA that leaked information to the press at critical times to cause problems for the Bush administration. The New York Times was a major recipient of such leaked material.

This report is just another such example of how screwed up this organization really is. It seems they are better at damaging the country rather then keeping it safe. Liberal politics is like that.

ANOTHER 'INTELLIGENCE' FIASCO
March 3, 2009 --

Give the US intelligence community points for consistency: It gets the big issues wrong just about every time. Consider the weekend comments of Adm. Mike Mullen - chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff - that Iran now likely has enough fissile material to make a nuclear weapon."We think they do, quite frankly," Mullen told CNN, adding, "Iran having nuclear weapons, I've believed for a long time, is a very, very bad outcome - for the region and for the world."

No kidding. Adding both credibility and anxiety to Mullen's words was a report in yesterday's Los Angeles Times: "Although a November 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate found that Iran had stopped developing a nuclear weapon, senior US officials now discount that conclusion."

That NIE declared that Iran had dismantled its nuclear-weapons program in 2003. The estimate - a cooperative effort by the nation's intelligence agencies - and its subsequent leak to the media undercut the Bush administration's attempt to awaken the world to the threat of a nuclear Iran.

The leak knocked that effort off the tracks - and now comes Mullen's disconcerting revelation. Another stunning performance by the US intelligence community, no? The most benign explanation is that once again the CIA and its sister agencies got things wrong. Like they got the Iraqi WMD program wrong, and were caught flat-footed by 9/11.

But then there is the possibility that NIE was - in the words of former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton - "politics disguised as intelligence."

That is, it was meant specifically to constrain the Bush administration's ability to deal with Iran.

If it's the former, the incompetence is stunning. If it's the latter, the arrogance is terrifying. Either way, the intelligence community must be brought under control. President Obama stands to be its next victim.