IPFS
Iran’s Road Less Traveled to Nukes - by Ray McGovern
Written by Ray McGovern Subject: Bush AdministrationIran’s Road Less Traveled to Nukes
By Ray McGovern
Thomas Fingar, the U.S. government’s top intelligence
analyst, in a public speech on Sept. 4, repeated the intelligence community’s
key judgment that Iran’s work on the “weaponization portion” of its nuclear
development program “was suspended” in 2003.
Not that the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) has exactly
trumpeted this important conclusion. One
has to read down to paragraph 16 of an article titled “Reduced Dominance Is
Predicted for the U.S.”, but there it is, right there on an inside page of
September 10’s Washington Post. The New York Times did not consider Fingar’s
remarks fit to print.
Yet, it is the 64-dollar question—whether or not there is
evidence that Iran has resumed work on the weapons part of its nuclear program
since the startling judgment of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of
November 2007 that it had stopped. The Post’s Joby Warrick and Walter Pincus
quote Fingar as saying there is no evidence that Iran has resumed the weapons
work.
For those who do not remember, Fingar was head of the State
Department’s intelligence unit in 2002, when he courageously resisted the
efforts of super-analyst Dick Cheney and his tool, then-CIA Director George
Tenet, to manufacture—out of whole cloth—a “reconstituted” Iranian nuclear
weapons program. Despite Fingar’s
resistance, that judgment appeared in the Oct. 1, 2002 NIE on Iraq’s
“continuing” weapons of mass destruction programs—an estimate dubbed “The Whore
of Babylon” by those intelligence analysts powerless to stop it.
Fingar, who is now head of the National Intelligence
Council and supervises the preparation of NIEs and the President’s Daily Brief, spoke in
Orlando at a conference organized by the Intelligence and National Security
Alliance, an association of public and private sector leaders of the
intelligence and national security fields. His remarks, particularly those during his evening keynote address on
Sept. 4, are well worth a read—particularly for those numerous observers who may
have concluded that articulate, trenchant analysis of world trends is a thing of
the past. [[[http://www.dni.gov/speeches.htm ]]]
In remarks earlier that day, Fingar made it clear that he
had set a new tone when he took over as chief substantive analyst for the
intelligence community. No longer would
he tolerate using quantity of intelligence products as a measure of
effectiveness. The intelligence he
was/is determined to provide had to be, in his words, “more useful…It had to be
on target...It had to be there at the right time, in the right place, with the
right information, with important insights…We had to know exactly what our
customers needed.”
Even if they did not want to hear it, he might have
added.
The gutsy NIE of November 2007 stated that, contrary to
what President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney had been saying
throughout 2007, the nuclear weapons-related portion of Iran’s nuclear program
had been stopped in the fall of 2003, and as of mid-2007 had probably not been
restarted.
The good news was that, at the insistence of our most
senior military, who realize what a debacle it would be to attack Iran, the NIE
judgments were made public. More good
news: Fingar was not summarily fired.
The Bad News
Tom Fingar plays third fiddle to Director of National
Intelligence Mike McConnell and his principal deputy, Donald Kerr. It is those two (God help us) who brief the
president six mornings a week with the President’s Daily Brief. On a substantive sophistication scale of 1 to
10, Fingar is close to a 10, in my view; McConnell and Kerr are somewhere
between a 3 and 4. They spent most of
their previous intelligence careers running satellites and other technical
collection activities.
McConnell, while testifying before Congress shortly after
being confirmed in his new job, seemed mystified as to why Israeli intelligence
on Iran’s nuclear program should be more alarmist that U.S. intelligence
judgments. As for Donald Kerr, one need
only read his vapid remarks before the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near
East Policy on May 29, 2008 [[[http://www.dni.gov/speeches.htm ]]] to get a sense of how little he brings to
the substantive table.
Kerr took an interestingly different line on Iran,
consistent with talking points handed out to the New York Times and other FCM a few days
earlier. Rather than repeating what the
NIE of November 2007 said, Kerr was agnostic about whether the Iranians had
restarted weapons-related activities (“we do not know” became the
phrasing).
The relevant NIE key judgment reads: “We assess with moderate confidence Tehran
has not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007…” (On Sept. 4, Fingar seemed to be subtly
updating that conclusion to mid-2008.)
The Kerr kind of fudging makes it easier for not only Bush
and Cheney, but also lesser lights like Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint
Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen to obfuscate on this key question.
Gates claims Iran is “hell-bent” on developing nuclear
weapons. Mullen has been more
discreet. Cheney (and presumably Bush)
no doubt would like him to sound more alarmist, but Mullen and other more sober
characters have settled on the curious formulation that Iran is “on a path” to
nuclear weapons.
Strange path, with Iran’s weapons-related activity
stopped. At very least, it would appear
to be a highly unusual “path”—one might say a Road Less Traveled to nukes.
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Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm
of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. During his 27 years as a CIA analyst his
duties included chairing National Intelligence Estimates and preparing/briefing
the President’s Daily Brief. He is a member of the Steering Group of
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
The original of
this article appeared on Consortiumnews.com.