Intelligence analysts puzzled over NIE release

ANALYSIS

updated 8:57 p.m. ET Sept. 27, 2006

WASHINGTON - National Intelligence Estimates are notorious for being watered down, partly because analysts spread across 16 different spy agencies often have difficulty settling on just the right words.

That’s what makes the tough language in this week’s terrorism analysis all the more striking. And it has left many puzzling over why the White House decided to release it.

To almost any reader, the assessment of trends in global terror for the next five years looks grim. It warns that most jihadist groups “will use improvised explosive devices and suicide attacks” on “soft targets.” It cautions that extremists still seek chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons. And it contemplates whether other types of leftist or separatist groups, such as anti-globalism factions, could adopt terrorist methods.

One former insider sees even more. Robert Hutchings, who headed the National Intelligence Council when the estimate was launched in 2004, called the document “a very severe indictment of, not just the administration, but where we as a country have found ourselves five years after 9/11.”

“It says the jihad is spreading, expanding and intensifying,” said Hutchings, who left the council in early 2005 and is now at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.

Beyond killing, capturing terrorists
Intelligence analysts are trained to avoid policy judgments that would entwine them in politics. But Hutchings noted that the declassified key judgments go beyond normal bounds to make the point that U.S. strategy must do more than killing or capturing terrorists and pressuring the governments that harbor them.

To craft this estimate, he said, the council reached beyond clandestine sources and held conferences with terror experts in the U.S. and Europe, as well as local Muslim communities, including clerics.

The key, Hutchings said, is that the United States needs to address more vigorously the conflicts that jihadists have successfully exploited.

“The administration will say that is what they are doing, but that is not true,” said Hutchings, who has not seen the classified 30-page document, but has read the three pages released publicly on Tuesday.

“We are back to paying no attention to Palestine because we don’t like Hamas,” he said. On Lebanon, “by encouraging Israel to extend its attacks, we have helped destabilize that country.”

“We think we can isolate Iran and are surprised when no one joins us,” he said.

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