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 […]

President Bush has signed a directive that formally kicks off what intelligence reporters have been chronicling for months: The National Security Agency, the nation’s electronic eavesdropping agency, will take a new, presumably aggressive role in responding to Internet-based attacks against government agencies. The Washington Post broke news of Bush’s directive on Friday, and the Baltimore […]

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 […]

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.

As Democrats and Republicans debate legislation that would alter 30-year-old limits on intrusive electronic and physical searches by the government, the secretive 11-member court that oversees surveillance of foreign-intelligence targets in the United States finds itself in the middle of a very public power struggle.Regardless of where law and policy makers fall on the question, […]

Mike Wertheimer may be the most dangerous man in U.S. intelligence. You would probably never guess it, judging from his lengthy and opaque title — assistant deputy director of national intelligence for analytic transformation and technology. A perfect testament to the well-worn bureaucratic tradition of offering little insight by tossing around a lot of words. […]

Just when you thought it was safe to go on vacation… Congress and the administration have been busy bees the past week, haggling over modifications to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The new law effectively legalizes much of what the National Security Agency has been doing since 9/11 under the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program. Intelligence […]

America’s declining influence over scientific and technological innovation has had “an enormous impact” on U.S. intelligence agencies, and “makes it more likely that our adversaries can employ the very same — or perhaps even more advanced” — science and technology than that available to the United States. That’s the assessment from the Intelligence Science Board, […]

No big surprise here, but an important admission from Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence. In a letter to Arlen Specter (Penn.), the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, McConnell acknowledges that the president authorized the National Security Agency to undertake “various intelligence activities,” after the 9/11, aimed at preventing another terrorist attack. […]