US:Critical new intelligence data helped trigger a US reassessment of Iran's nuclear weapons programme, writes Greg Millerin Washington
Last spring, as US intelligence agencies worked to complete an assessment of Iran's nuclear weapons programme, they were on track to reach the same conclusion as previous reports: Tehran was bent on building the bomb.
But within weeks, there was an abrupt change of course. The earlier drafts were scrapped. Analysts began assembling a new report built around the startling conclusion that Iran's nuclear weapons programme actually had been shut down for more than four years.
What happened? As US intelligence officials on Tuesday sought to explain the remarkable reversal, they pointed to two factors: the emergence of critical new information over the summer, and a determination to avoid repeating the mistakes that preceded the war in Iraq.
According to current and former US intelligence officials familiar with the matter, the new information that surfaced included intercepted conversations of Iranian officials discussing the country's nuclear weapons programme, as well as a journal obtained from an Iranian source that documented decisions to shut it down.
"When we first got some of this stuff, the fact that we got it was exciting," said a senior US intelligence official.
He said the information was obtained as part of a stepped-up collection effort targeting Iran. The new information triggered a cascade of recalculations across the 16 agencies that make up the US intelligence community, the official said.
Analysts at the CIA and elsewhere began to revisit classified reports that they had scrutinised repeatedly in recent years. As they did, officials said, they saw new details in old data that added up to Iran being less committed than previously believed to obtaining a nuclear bomb.
US intelligence officials said that process of re-evaluation was guided by lessons learned from the prewar intelligence on Iraq. In the months leading up to the war, the intelligence community in just 19 days put together an estimate that concluded that Iraq had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. They didn't take the usual time to challenge their assumptions or sources, which later proved to be off-base.
The document's authors spent more than a year producing it and, mindful of criticism of the intelligence on Iraq, officials took steps to insulate the process from political influence.
Intelligence experts praised the rigour of the approach, even as some questioned the outcome.
Philip D Zelikow, a former senior aide to secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, is an advocate of diplomacy in dealing with Iran, but he said the report understated the threat. The wording of the document "appears to be a reaction to the wording of past estimates", Zelikow said, calling it the latest example of a "pendulum of analytic momentum that swings between highlighting risks and understating risks."
Mark Lowenthal, a former senior CIA official, said: "I think a lot of people are saying 'Oh good, they learned their lessons from Iraq'. But I'm not sure that's the right answer. Avoiding those mistakes does not of necessity mean the next estimate you write will be correct."
The new intelligence was considered compelling enough to call it to the attention of president Bush in August. In a news conference on Tuesday at the White House, Bush said that the nation's intelligence director, J Michael McConnell, "came in and said we have some new information". Bush said McConnell did not provide details of the new data. "He did tell me it was going to take a while to analyse," Bush said."
The decision to hold those details back has come under question because Bush and others in the administration continued in the succeeding months to use heated rhetoric to warn of the dangers posed by a nuclear-armed Iran. In October, Bush described that scenario as potentially pointing to "world war three". But US intelligence officials said they felt compelled to employ that level of caution in part because of the searing experience surrounding the war in Iraq.
"In 2002, one of the knocks on the process at the time was that information was not vetted by analysts and was being rushed into the Oval Office," the senior US intelligence official said.
This time, even as they vetted the new intelligence, intelligence officials said they deliberately shielded analysts from administration officials and policymakers.
"There was a lot of criticism, justifiably or not, of policymakers shaping the Iraq WMD ," the senior US intelligence official said. "This was the intelligence community, without political interference, looking at the facts, reaching its judgments."
As a result, it wasn't until about two weeks ago that vice-president Dick Cheney, national security adviser Stephen J Hadley, and other high-level officials received initial briefings on the pending findings.
The White House has not clarified when Bush was told that it appeared Iran had halted its nuclear weapons programme.
During his news conference, Bush said he first saw the National Intelligence Estimate last Wednesday, just five days before a declassified portion of it was released.
Officials declined to discuss the new intelligence on Iran publicly, citing the need to protect sources and methods. But current and former officials provided basic descriptions of the information, saying that the intercepts were of a series of conversations involving an Iranian official "complaining in 2007 about the suspension of the military programme in 2003".
The other information was described as a journal or diary by an Iranian "involved in the management of the military programme", a former official said. It was unclear who provided the diary.
Although the new information came from a limited number of sources, officials said it was considered reliable. Officials stressed that confidence in the new information came from comparing it with existing data from other sources.