posted.
You'll see that most of Johnson's post (Johnson worked @ CIA and in
State's Counter Terrorism Office, don't know when or how long) is
really Ray Close's analysis. Close often sends you thoughtful pieces
and he must know Johnson to whom he effectively hands over the blog
tonight. *
**
You'll see that most of Johnson's post (Johnson worked @ CIA and in
State's Counter Terrorism Office, don't know when or how long) is
really Ray Close's analysis. Close often sends you thoughtful pieces
and he must know Johnson to whom he effectively hands over the blog
tonight. *
**
*There's no link so I assume it was a private correspondence between the
two. The site is /No Quarter/, the address *is www.noquarter.typepad.com
<http://www.noquarter.typepad
must know each other. *
*Tuesday, 26 September 2006*
The Facts Behind the NIE
*by
Larry C Johnson **(ex-CIA/ST re counter-terrorism)*
*Although the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) regarding Iraq and
terrorism is still classified (UPDATE: The Key Judgments are now
declassified and can be found at * *this link*
<http://www.dni.gov/press
the data behind the findings is not and has been publicly available for
three years. I have written repeatedly on this fact and it has been, I
am told, the judgment of the intelligence community for at least two
years. The statistics on terrorist activity, until this year, were
published in the State Department's annual report on terrorism (Patterns
of Global Terrorism). The Bush Administration tried to not publish the
report last year because the data showed an unprecedented surge in
international terrorist attacks. The following chart shows the bad news
(it is based on the statistics collected by the CIA and supplied to the
Department of State): *
*Comparison_of_significant
<http://noquarter.typepad.com/
**
<http://noquarter.typepad.com/
*A "Significant" terrorist incident is one in which a person was killed,
wounded or kidnapped (or there was property damage in excess of
$10,000). The statistics tell a very clear and simple story (I bet
someone who can read My Pet Goat can figure it out). *
* *The total number of international terrorist incidents, both
significant and non-significant, declined until 2002. *
* *The number of significant incidents increased steadily starting
in 1992. *
* *Most of the significant incidents were caused by radical Islamic
extremists. *
* *2004 marked the single, largest increase in terrorist activity
ever recorded since the CIA started keeping records dating back to
1968. *
* *The four fold increase in significant terrorist incidents
(attacks in which people were killed and wounded) was a direct
consequence of the war in Iraq. All you have to do is look at the
attacks recorded and the people killed and wounded in those
attacks. Iraq and India were the big targets in 2004. *
* *According to information provided at the U.S. State Department in
2005, there were approximately 198 significant terrorist attacks
in Iraq in 2004. This was nine times more than the 22 significant
terrorist attacks in Iraq identified in the State Department's
2003 report. Indeed, the number of significant terrorist attacks
in Iraq in 2004 exceeded the 175 significant terrorist attacks
that occurred throughout the entire world in 2003. *
*Ray Close, who served as the top CIA official in Saudi Arabia, has
offered the following on the importance of the current NIE:*
*No reasonable person can possibly deny that our intervention in
Iraq has been an enormous stimulus to terrorist activity worldwide.
Efforts by John McCain and others to discount the significance of
that factor by pointing out that the attacks on 9/11 occurred before
our overthrow of Saddam Hussein is as trivial and irrelevant as they
are disingenuous. *
*As someone who devoted his entire career to the intelligence
profession, I was shocked and angered to read this in the NY Times
this morning: *
*"Several of the lawmakers who appeared on Sunday talk shows said
they had not seen the classified document . . [the National
Intelligence Estimate]. Intelligence reports from American spy
agencies are not circulated widely on Capitol Hill, and
Congressional officials said neither the House nor the Senate
intelligence committees had been formally briefed on the report." *
*A National Intelligence Estimate is just exactly what the title
says it is. An NIE isn't issued every day. It sometimes takes weeks
to write and coordinate. Even the decision to prepare an NIE in the
first place is a painstaking one. It is a BIG DEAL, in other words.
An NIE is not a single report from a single agency, but represents
the considered judgment of the entire intelligence community (16
different agencies, in theory) on a subject deemed to be of vital
significance to makers of national security and foreign policy. *
*If key members of Congress (like Majority Leader Bill Frist, who
claimed ignorance of this report), and neither the House nor the
Senate intelligence committees, have seen the document since it was
produced in April, then we have to ask ourselves whether the White
House and Congress take any serious interest in the most important
products of America's enormous (and extremely expensive)
intelligence empire. Are we to conclude that the "brains" of the
United States Government (presumably those who formulate and carry
out national policy) are simply not interested in making use of the
best information and advice available to them? That seems to confirm
the growing impression that policy is influenced today more by
considerations of ideology and political expediency than by
painstaking and objective study of the world situation. *
*Once again we are witnessing the Bush Administration trying to ignore
the bad news the intelligence community is obligated to tell the
President. The willful ignorance of President Bush, his advisors, and
his Congressional enablers is creating a more dangerous world. Instead
of taking the bull by the horns and confronting the issue, Bush and
company are burying their heads in the sand. Just remember that when we
are hit again by a mass casualty attack. *
*Posted by Larry Johnson on Tuesday, 26 September 2006 at 16:42 | *
*Permalink*
<http://noquarter.typepad.com
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