.....reports that the NIE was drafted by people with a known political agenda – or acute cases of Bush Derangement Syndrome – make for entertaining political hay, but it has been my experience that the principle drafters of such assessments come from one lead agency, not the executives at the top of the food chain. Anyone who can prove that partisan hacks cherry picked the intelligence information they wanted and then strong-armed the rest of the community to go along with their conclusions would have a bombshell on their hands. These executives do play an important role in the NIE process, which I’ll address later.
Finally, building an NIE is not unlike any other bureaucratic exercise that involves multiple agencies of the government. Competing opinions are argued, disputes are mediated, and dissent noted. At the end of the day a deliverable is due – the rough draft – and the involved parties get to sit at their home offices for a period of time, ruminate on the work, and forward to the principle drafter their comments, edits, suggestions and recommendations. What follows are several rounds of review and edit sessions with increasingly more senior members of the agencies involved and the National Intelligence Council, until the final draft is ready for review, approval and dissemination.
I spent almost 20 years in the intelligence community and I have absolutely no idea what the political affiliation or disposition of any of my colleagues or superiors were. No one talked politics; we talked data, methodology and analysis. The idea that a dozen-odd people would sit down for days at a time concocting a piece of work that was purely designed to thwart the efforts of a given administration is more than a little absurd. I have no doubt that I worked with people who did not agree with the Executive’s agenda (regardless of who the Executive was at any given time), but you show up to these things with data and arguments you can defend; you show up with political party talking points and you’re going to catch an intellectual beating.....
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