Iraq and Iran national intelligence estimates and intelligence reform

Iraq & Iran NIEs

The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 instituted the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) (as well as the position of Director itself) and tasked it with coordinating intelligence gathering and dissemination between the disparate agencies of the IC. In 2007 the ODNI implemented Intelligence Community Directive (ICD) 203, which outlined analytical standards for the production of any intelligence product with the goal of ensuring that the IC recorded and shared data in rigorous, analytically sound way, and the implementation of these standards was one of the most important changes seen within the IC after the establishment of the ODNI itself. To understand the importance of these analytical standards not only in the creation of intelligence products but in the actions those products inform, one may compare and contrast the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq, which was prepared without concern for the analytical standards outlined in ICD 203, and the 2006 NIE on Iran, which implements the ICD 203 analytical standards in its assessment of Iran's nuclear intentions and capabilities.

Before comparing and contrasting the 2002 and 2007 NIEs, one must briefly outline the five analytical standards set forth in ICD 203. They are: objectivity, independent of political considerations, timeliness, based on all available sources of intelligence, and exhibits proper standards of analytic tradecraft.

Each of these standards are fairly self-explanatory, although the fifth standard, exhibiting proper standards of analytic tradecraft, is somewhat more involved, because it demands that any given intelligence product provide a detailed account of its reasoning, sources, underlying assumptions, and relation to U.S. national security as well as previous analysis.

While ICD 203 makes it clear that the first four standards are vital in guiding "the writing of intelligence analysis in all IC analytic elements," the extensive nature of the directions for exhibiting the proper standards of analytic tradecraft demonstrates that the ODNI interprets these standards as the key to successful intelligence analysis, and indeed, a look at the 2002 and 2007 NIEs reveals how following the proper standards of analytic tradecraft actually works to ensure that the other four standards are met.

Though written before the implementation of ICD 203, the 2002 NIE on Iraq, titled Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, has been criticized for failing to meet standards of objectivity, freedom from political considerations, and timeliness, but these failures may be seen as part of a larger problem with the report. In particular, while the 2002 NIE exhibits a failure to meet these standards, a pervasive problem is the way it disregards the proper standards of analytic tradecraft when it comes to properly describing the "quality and reliability of underlying sources" as well as distinguishing "between underlying intelligence and analysts' asusmptions and judgements."

This can be seen when one compares the introduction of the unclassified 2002 NIE with the 2007 NIE on Iran, because the difference in terms of language and clarity is stark. The 2002 NIE begins with a list of "key judgements," including the central assessment "that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions"

While later on the authors classify the level of confidence they have in each judgement, they do not sufficiently account for which sources give them such a high level of confidence, and they do not sufficiently explain the relationship between their judgements and the underlying analysis. Ultimately, the 2002 NIE demonstrates a lack of rigor regarding source vetting and citation, and it is this underlying issue that allows for the rest of the document to fall so short of the analytical standards set forth in ICD 203; because the underlying sources of intelligence are not properly vetted and assessed, and the standards by which they were assessed are not made explicit in the document, the 2002 NIE stumbles right out of the gate because there is no independent, logical means by which to judge the accuracy of its estimations and predictions.

The 2007 NIE, on the other hand, opens with a detailed explanation of both the scope of the estimate and the meaning of particular terms and phrases.