NIE Follies

The White House is not being served by their selective release of the April 2006 National Intelligence Estimate on global terror which suggests that Iraq is a "cause celebre" for the jihadist movement. You don't want headlines like White House Refuses to Release Whole NIE. It shows that the media understands the time-honored practice of selective declassification that this Administration has performed over and over again.

Press secretary Tony Snow said releasing the full report, portions of which President Bush declassified on Tuesday, would jeopardize the lives of agents who gathered the information.

It would also risk the nation's ability to work with foreign governments and to keep secret its U.S. intelligence-gathering methods, Snow said, and "compromise the independence of people doing intelligence analysis."

"If they think their work is constantly going to be released to the public they are going to pull their punches," Snow said.

This is why both ranking members, Republican and Democratic, of the Senate Intelligence Committee called for the full release. They clearly both want CIA agents to die.

Meanwhile, about that second NIE on Iraq that Jane Harman called for release yesterday: ain't gonna happen until after the election, and Harman is hopping mad about it. Interestingly, this NIE exists because Democratic lawmakers forced a report to be collected (behind-the-scenes fighting back). But Fran Townsend is claiming the scheduled release date is January 2007, and that has nothing to do with the election (oh, sure). Harman wrote a letter to the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte:

I received your letter of September 26, in which you confirmed that the National Intelligence Council (NIC) is writing a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq. Though you promised that the NIE would be completed "in a timely manner," senior White House officials have indicated publicly that the report may not be completed until January 2007.

This timetable is unacceptable. Sectarian violence, which has reached record levels and continues to grow, is putting our troops - not to mention millions of Iraqis - at grave risk. Furthermore, the proven ineffectiveness of U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces, an absence of effective infrastructure reconstruction, and political crises that threaten the fragile new polity have made it clear that we need a new strategy in Iraq.

NIEs have been produced in as little as several weeks, as in the case of the 2002 report on Iraqi WMD. While I understand the desire to be thorough, events in Iraq make it urgent that the Intelligence Community produce this NIE immediately. If your intention is to delay this report until after the November elections, I do not think that is appropriate given that U.S. troops are at risk at this moment.

U.S. policymakers need the Intelligence Community's insights to determine how to defend our troops and our interests in Iraq. I urge you to expedite completion of the NIE and to release it in both classified and publicly releasable unclassified forms.

I don't expect to see that second NIE before November 7, but I'm glad Harman is making a stink about it.

Finally, many have noticed this little phrase stuck into the back end of the key judgments released by the President yesterday:

Anti-US and anti-globalization sentiment is on the rise and fueling other radical ideologies. This could prompt some leftist, nationalist, or separatist groups to adopt terrorist methods to attack US interests. The radicalization process is occurring more quickly, more widely, and more anonymously in the Internet age, raising the likelihood of surprise attacks by unknown groups whose members and supporters may be difficult to pinpoint.

For some reason, there's no mention of rightist groups who might adopt terrorist methods. I guess rightist groups have never, I don't know, blown up a federal building or anything like that.

Obviously there's a little more at work here with regard to the parallels this government sees between terrorists and those who disagree with its policies. It's right there in the report. Digby is, as usual, definitive on this point:

I think the bottom line is that most people don't give a damn about a bunch of swarthy foreigners. They think the people in Guantanamo are animals and even if they aren't exactly guilty of the things the US says they are guilty of, they are guilty of not being American. I don't think they lose much sleep over it and they don't see it as applying to them. But they are wrong. In light of the possibilities outlined above for using this legislation to "disappear" anyone from terrorists to leftists to those who are deemed to be anti-American, this may be a day to remember the famous poem by Pastor Martin Niemöller:

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

Amen, brother.