Many have asked how it could be that a comparatively small group of intelligence analysts in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) was able to get it right on several key Iraq-related issues, while larger agencies like CIA and the Defense...
The latest commission looking into intelligence failures on Iraq reports a certain consistency in the performance of the intelligence community. We are informed that we also "know disturbingly little about the weapons programs" of other countries – such as Iran....
Hats off to journalist Dafna Linzer and Sunday's Washington Post for exposing a familiar but fallacious syllogism favored by senior Bush administration officials: Iran has a lot of oil. Ergo, Iran does not need nuclear energy for civil purposes. Ergo, Iran's nuclear...
Let's review now. It was bad intelligence that made President George W. Bush invade Iraq, right? No, you say, and you are correct; that is just White House spin. The "intelligence" was conjured up many months after President George W. Bush's decision to attack. Now,...
Senate skids have been greased for John Negroponte to be confirmed as the first director of national intelligence. Never mind that he deliberately misled Congress about serious human rights abuses in Honduras where he was ambassador from 1981 to 1985. That dissembling...
The nomination of John Negroponte to the new post of director of National Intelligence (DNI) caps a remarkable parade of Bush administration senior nominees. Among the most recent: Alberto Gonzales, confirmed as attorney general: the lawyer who advised the president...
Quick! Anyone! Who can put the brakes on Vice President Dick Cheney before we have another war on our hands? Current and former intelligence analysts are reacting with wonderment and apprehension to his remarks last week in an interview with Don Imus. Cheney made...
The following remarks were delivered at a press conference for Veterans for Common Sense. My professional credentials are in intelligence, but I believe the nomination of Alberto Gonzales for attorney general is first and foremost a moral issue, so I will address it...
While President George W. Bush, his neoconservative advisers, and centrist Democrats bask in the glow of America’s status as "the one remaining superpower in the world," signs are mounting that other major powers do not intend to hunker down and...
Yesterday's conference on "Al-Qaeda 2.0: Transnational Terrorism After 9/11," sponsored by the New America Foundation and the New York University Center on Law & Security, was a gift to those wanting an update on informed opinion on the subject. The...
