The Intelligence Community Has Cleaned Up Its Attribution Problem … Has the Press?
James Risen has another article on the evolution of intelligence analysis, this time describing how screwing up the Iraq intelligence so badly now weighs on Iran analysts (for the better, IMO).
I was struck by the description of one way the intelligence community has improved its analysis.
The intelligence community also now requires that analysts be told much more about the sources of the information they receive from the United States’ human and technological spies. Analysts were left in the dark on such basic issues in the past, which helps explain why bogus information from fabricators was included in some prewar intelligence reports on Iraq. And, when they write their reports, they must include better attribution and sourcing for each major assertion.
While I’m skeptical the IC has improved sufficiently on this front (I suspect, for example, that attribution problems are one reason the IC was looking for an AQAP attack in 2009 in Yemen and not on a plane bound for Detroit), I am heartened that at least the IC is trying to give analysts more information on where information comes from and what biases might come with that information. At the very least, it should help avoid the stovepiping of information from people like Curveball.
But reading that passage got me wondering whether the press has gotten any better on this front. This article was published in the NYT, a newspaper that rather famously promised to clean up its anonymous sourcing after the Judy Miller fiasco, but which routinely fails to meet its own guidelines.
Don’t get me wrong–Risen himself meets these guidelines in the story, explaining why around 3 anonymous sources had to remain anonymous.
one former senior intelligence official, who like several others quoted in this article would speak only on the condition of anonymity about internal agency matters
He also includes on-the-record quotes from sources that appear identical to the named anonymous sources he quotes from; leaving little doubt as to who and where his story came from.
one former official who worked with the [CIA] analyst [who had a breakdown after the Iraq intelligence debacle]
Greg Thielmann, a former State Department intelligence analyst who resigned to protest what he considered the Bush administration’s politicization of the prewar Iraq intelligence
Paul Pillar, a former senior C.I.A. analyst on the Middle East
according to the former officials [who worked on the 2007 Iran NIE]
one official [who worked on the 2007 NIE] recalled
Thomas Fingar, who was chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the time of the 2007 assessment on Iran
He even describes John Bolton in such a way as to downplay Bolton’s own role in intelligence as Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, presumably making it clear (as if there were any doubt) that Bolton was not among his sources describing the problems with intelligence under Bush.
John R. Bolton, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former ambassador to the United Nations in the Bush administration
So this is not a commentary on Risen. Rather, it’s an observation that while the intelligence community has made efforts to fix a problem common to both the intelligence and journalistic communities leading up to the Iraq War, the efforts of the press to do so have been poorly enforced. Some of the same newspapers are allowing anonymous sources to again drive their coverage, without providing casual readers with the clues to understand who is making the belligerent claims.
Which is another way of saying that while the intelligence community seems to be trying to avoid pushing the US into another trumped up war, a number of people in the press aren’t making the same effort.
Though maybe letting Risen writing repeated articles on the difficulty of Iran intelligence is Jill Abramson’s way of trying to change the NYT’s ways post-Bill Keller.
EW,
Really enjoyed the book Salon yesterday. So glad you were there and your questions/comments were terrific!
“Only speak on conditions of anonymity” is to me ubiquitous in today’s lazy journalism. Should name it the Tim Russert rule.
@Arbusto: The Tim Russert rule is something far more insidious: it says conversations that have nothing to do with journalism will be protected.
It’s still ubiquitous, mind you, but not the same as anonymous sourcing of actual journalistic information.
I often liken intelligence analysis to being like science, but without the rigor. Things like this are the reason why:
How can you form an accurate judgment of a situation, without being able to evaluate the quality of the information? Scientists argue constantly over things like this.
The people in charge of these operations were/are the same people who complained about the lack of information sharing between agencies, right?
It sounds like they might eventually catch up to some businesses. (We’re trying to make sure we can trace every piece of information in our GIS database to a documented source. It’s a monumental task.)
Like you, I am hopeful that the Iraqi experience will continue to help improve analysis on Iran. However, I am not convinced that improved attribution is the most striking feature of Risen’s story, or that it is more than window dressing to help sell a pernicious view.
It would be foolish to take the bait that the concerted Bush administration campaign of Iraqi disinformation should be pushed down to the operational level and discounted as honest analysis errors that can be remedied by better sharing within the intelligence community. That once again attempts to shift blame from the Bush administration’s vision, mission, goals, objectives, policies and procedures. That itself is ongoing disinformation that shields the perpetrators. The NYT is still the vehicle. Nothing has changed.
“In congressional testimony, former CIA Counterterrorism chief Vince Cannistraro said that in the weeks and months leading up to the war in Iraq, the White House had exerted unprecedented pressure on the CIA and other intelligence agencies to come up with evidence linking Iraq to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. Pressure was also placed on analysts to show that Baghdad was trying to build a nuclear bomb. In written testimony, Cannistraro said that Vice President Cheney and his top aide, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, went to CIA headquarters to press mid-level analysts to provide support for the claims. Cheney, he said,”insisted that desk analysts were not looking hard enough for the evidence.” Bamford, A Pretext for War, p336
“Having largely shunned the CIA’s analysis, the Pentagon’s top leadership was instead dependent on selectively culled intelligence from Wurmser, a man who had long pushed his own radical agenda for the Middle East, and the bogus information from Chalabi and his defectors. It was a dangerous exercise in self-deception. Their task now was to frighten and deceive the rest of the country, and there was no better way than with the image of a madman a few screws away from a nuclear bomb.” ibid p298
“Analysts were left in the dark on such basic issues (sources) in the past, which helps explain why bogus information from fabricators was included in some prewar intelligence reports on Iraq.” Risen NYT above
The Bush administration worked very hard to deceive and to stampede our country into war. That is the elephant in the room. National failure to come to terms with that is but one of the profound costs of Obama’s refusal to have a public accounting.