I have a story in today’s National Journal about the remarkable reaction to the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. As I reported this story, I was struck by the degree of confusion around the NIE’s key judgments, stemming largely from how they were written.
There are still many more questions to answer. But [...]

On December 3, 2007, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell declassified a set of key judgments from a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s efforts to build a nuclear weapon. The judgments may have contained some good news — namely, “that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program” — but few in the upper [...]

Saying he wanted “to be very clear in addressing the Iranian nuclear capability,” Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell told a Senate committee today that Iran continues down a path that could lead to construction of a nuclear weapon. Reiterating what appears to be a coordinated line of thinking, McConnell said that Iran is still [...]

The list is growing. Israel has now come out against the United States’ National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, declaring that the country is three years away from obtaining offensive nuclear capabilities. Mossad chief Meir Dagan presented that assessment to a Knesset committee Monday, and added that the NIE “pulls the rug out from under” attempts [...]

So now, in addition to the Director of National Intelligence, and the President of the United States, add the French government to the dissent column on the explosive National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
Herve Morin, the French defense minister, was in Washington yesterday, and he said that “coordinated information from a number [...]

President Bush offered fresh evidence in his State of the Union address last night that not all decision-makers share the intelligence community’s view on Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Although he was remarkably restrained in his rhetoric–particularly in comparison to years past–Bush homed in on Iran’s uranium enrichment and ballistic missile programs to remind us that the [...]

Lawrence Wright of The New Yorker has a new (very long) piece on DNI Mike McConnell, the culmination of an apparently extraordinary level of access and series of intimate interviews. (Wright and McConnell ate together and flew once on the DNI’s private plane.)
While I hate to say the piece didn’t do much to illuminate McConnell’s [...]

In releasing a bombshell about Iran’s nuclear program, intelligence director Mike McConnell reversed a vow of secrecy. But he probably had no choice.
“You will be disappointed,” Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, told a gathering of journalists in Washington on November 13. U.S. spy agencies were putting the finishing touches on a National [...]

My initial take on the Iran NIE.