An Innocent Abroad?

(This article is posted at WeeklyStandard.com)

In the wake of the Supreme Court's Boumediene decision earlier this month, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has now decided that the Bush administration was wrong to label Gitmo detainee Huzaifa Parhat an "enemy combatant." The Court of Appeals decided that Parhat should be released, transferred to another country, or granted another tribunal session.

Predictably, the decision has been celebrated by critics of the Bush administration and the Guantánamo detention facility. They have cited the decision as further evidence of the unjustness of America's detention policies. And some, including the editors of the New York Times, have highlighted Parhat's own "insistence that he was an innocent swept up in the chaos in Afghanistan."

However, Parhat is far from an obvious innocent. A closer look at documents released by the Department of Defense, as well as information from other sources, reveals that his story is not clear-cut. Because the opinion contains classified information, the Court of Appeals has not yet released it. And we may never see the classified evidence the court relied upon in making its determination. Nevertheless, given what is known about Parhat and his affiliations, there are ample reasons to think he was a threat, albeit perhaps a low-level one.

According to the DOD, 22 citizens of China have been detained at Gitmo. Five of them have been released, but 17 of them remain at Gitmo. Like Parhat, all of these men are Uighurs, that is, natives of China's Xinjiang region, or East Turkestan, as Uighurs call it. The Uighurs, who have been oppressed by various Chinese policies, have been fighting for their independence for decades. And given the deplorable human rights record of the Chinese regime, they have won at least some international support for their efforts.

Not all Uighur separatists are created equal though. A minority of them in the early 1980s formed the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a separatist group rooted in radical Islamic ideology and dedicated to jihad. And by the early 1990s, the ETIM had become a significant fighting force with a presence throughout Central and South Asia. It was only a matter of time before the ETIM's members would cross paths with their Arab and Afghan ilk.

By the late 1990s, Hasan Mahsum, the ETIM's leader, began mingling with Osama bin Laden. Al Qaeda's CEO reportedly gave Mahsum $300,000--although, this claim may come from the Chinese government, which is not always the most honest broker of information. However, we know for certain that bin Laden gave Mahsum's forces training space inside Afghanistan. In particular, the ETIM opened a training camp at Tora Bora.

And that is where Parhat was in October 2001 when, in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, American forces bombarded the ETIM's Tora Bora training camp. The bombings sent the Uighurs, including Parhat, scrambling to Pakistan where they were arrested. During his tribunal session at Gitmo, Parhat admitted that he attended the ETIM's Tora Bora camp from June 2001 until the bombing began. During those months, he admitted to being trained in the use of small arms, including the Kalashnikov rifle and a pistol.

At his tribunal session, Parhat denied having any "Arab" (that is, al Qaeda) trainers at the Tora Bora camp or having had anything to do with al Qaeda. But he did admit that Mahsum was the leader of his group:


Q: There is an important gentleman in the Uighur community by the name of Hasan Mahsum; do you know who this man is?

Parhat: Yes. I saw that person.

Q: Who is he, please?

Parhat: He is a Turkistani person. [Note: As the DOD transcript notes, the Uighurs frequently refer to themselves as "Turkistani."]

Q. Is he the leader of your Uighur group?

Parhat. Yes.

Q. Would he give the Uighurs in the camp guidance and instruction on what to do?

Parhat. Maybe he would do that and there was another person and he was the leader of the camp guiding all the people. I saw this person twice at the camp. I forgot the leader name.

Q. Would that be Mr. Abdul Haq?

Parhat. Yes. . . .

Q. There is a concern that Mr. Hassan Maksum may have relationships with al Qaeda people. Do you know any thing about this?

Parhat. I don't think so. The people in Turkistan will not associate with al Qaeda.

On this last point, Parhat is either lying or ignorant of the relationship between the ETIM and al Qaeda. As the Combatant Status Review Board noted in its summary of evidence (a document used to determine whether or not a Gitmo detainee is an enemy combatant) for Parhat, the ETIM's training facilities at Tora Bora "were funded by Bin Laden and the Taliban."

Parhat denied this specific point too, but there is abundant evidence indicating that the Tora Bora training camp was an al Qaeda-Taliban-ETIM joint venture. For example, as terrorism expert Rohan Gunaratna rightly noted in an interview earlier this year:

We have seen that al Qaeda and the East Turkestan Islamic Movement have released a number of statements and videos where ETIM is training in al Qaeda camps with their instructors. Hasan Mahsum, the leader of ETIM, was killed in South Waziristan--the area that al Qaeda was operating in 2003--by the Pakistani forces. There have been a number of ETIM members arrested in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They are working very [closely] with Al-Qaeda. Abu [Zubaydah], the operations chief for Al-Qaeda, met with Uighur radical groups entering Pakistan. The relationship between the two is very strong.

Former Indian intelligence officer B. Raman has similarly explained the relationship between the ETIM and al Qaeda. Raman has written that the ETIM "is a major component of the terrorist network headed by bin Laden" throughout South and Central Asia. Raman further claims:

Hasan Mahsum, the ETIM ringleader, used to hide in Kabul and had an Afghan passport issued by the Taliban. Bin Laden asked the ETIM to stir up trouble in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and then stage an organized infiltration into Xinjiang. The "Turkistan Army" under the ETIM fought along with the Taliban in Afghanistan. This "Army" has a special "China Battalion" with about 320 terrorists from Xinjiang. The battalion is under the direct command of Hasan Mahsum's deputy Kabar.

The Times's editorial noted that supporters of Parhat and his fellow Uighur detainees "maintain that they were captured by mistake and had no hostile intentions toward the United States." This is a common defense of the ETIM-associated detainees at Gitmo. They are supposedly only interested in targeting the Chinese regime, so the U.S. should look the other way.

But as disgusting as the Chinese regime's human rights record is, there is no moral equivalency between legitimate opposition and terrorists who seek to hijack their cause. Osama bin Laden's grand vision was to unite terrorist groups around the world by bringing nationalist, ethnic and other sectarian groups under the banner of his jihad. Bin Laden and al Qaeda were at least partially successful in this endeavor in Algeria, Somalia, Chechnya, Bosnia, Southeast Asia, South and Central Asia, as well as Iraq. There is every indication that he was successful in incorporating the ETIM into his global designs as well. Moreover, it is not true that the ETIM targets only Chinese interests. As Raman points out, the group has also "fought in Afghanistan, Chechnya and Uzbekistan" among other locations. ETIM trainees may profess a lack of hostility towards the United States, but once allied with al Qaeda, there is no telling where they may be asked to wage jihad.

We do not know what basis the Court of Appeals had for determining Parhat was improperly labeled an "enemy combatant." We may never see the classified evidence they relied upon. Perhaps there are mitigating factors that trump Parhat's disturbing ties. We can only hope that the Parhat decision was not grounded in an ignorance of the ETIM.

Harboring Al Qaeda

(This article first appeared on the Weekly Standard's web site.)

THE SENATE INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE has once again released a report claiming that the Bush administration hyped prewar intelligence. The so-called Phase Two report is supposed to investigate the Bush administration's handling of prewar intelligence. In reality, the report is little more than yet another attempt by partisan Democrats to make political hay out of flawed prewar intelligence. (The only Republicans to endorse the report were two of the Senate's most liberal GOP members.) The committee focused exclusively on prewar statements by Bush administration officials, ignoring similar statements by leading Democrats. Therefore, the report is intended to portray the Bush administration in the worst possible light. But even with this bias, the committee came to a noteworthy conclusion: The Bush administration was right to claim that Saddam's regime was harboring al Qaeda members.

The Senate Intelligence Committee's report includes this conclusion at the end of a terse section on the Bush administration's claims about Saddam's prewar terror ties:

Statements that Iraq provided safe haven for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other al Qaeda-related terrorist members were substantiated by the intelligence assessments.

Intelligence assessments noted Zarqawi's presence in Iraq and his ability to travel and operate within the country. The intelligence community generally believed that Iraqi intelligence must have known about, and therefore at least tolerated, Zarqawi's presence in the country.

Regarding postwar information collected by the U.S. intelligence community, the report reads:

Postwar information supports prewar assessments and statements that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was in Baghdad and that al Qaeda was present in northern Iraq.

These conclusions should not be surprising. In his book At the Center of the Storm, former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet provided a number of details concerning the safe haven al Qaeda members received in Saddam's Iraq. For example, Tenet wrote that two of Ayman al-Zawahiri's top operatives, Thirwat Shihata and Yussef Dardiri, received safe haven in Baghdad. Tenet says that there was "concern that these two might be planning operations outside Iraq."

The first report on the uses of prewar intelligence published by the Senate Intelligence Committee in July 2004 also found that Zarqawi freely roamed around Iraq and Saddam's goons must have been aware of his presence. The authors of the Butler Report, the British government's investigation into prewar intelligence, found roughly the same. Even other al Qaeda members have, on occasion, been open about the relationship between Zarqawi, other al Qaeda operatives, and Saddam's regime in prewar Iraq.

Despite all of these findings, however, the myth that Zarqawi and other al Qaeda operatives lived in Saddam's neo-Stalinist state without receiving at least the dictator's tacit support has lived on. But now, even in a partisan report designed to attack the Bush administration's credibility, the Senate Intelligence Committee has admitted that Bush and his officials were right to argue that Saddam was harboring al Qaeda fugitives. Both prewar and postwar intelligence assessments confirm their view.

But no one should take the Senate Intelligence Committee's word one way or another on these issues. In fact, the only reason that we know the committee got the story of Saddam's safe haven for al Qaeda members right is because so many other sources have already confirmed it. And while the Senate Intelligence Committee got this issue right, it got many others wrong. The report is not even internally consistent and the committee simply ignored numerous pieces of information that got in the way of some of its conclusions.

One glaring illustration is the following baseless finding:

Iraq and al Qaeda did not have a cooperative relationship. Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al Qaeda to provide material or operational support.

Here, the committee simply regurgitated an old storyline invented by some analysts within the CIA and other intelligence bureaucracies. The truth is that this was a prewar assumption that went untested and is contradicted by a variety of pieces of evidence discovered both in the prewar as well as postwar period. Some of this evidence is cited in the committee's own report!

For example, if Saddam was willing to harbor al Qaeda terrorists, as the committee itself admits was substantiated by "postwar information," then how can the committee claim that Saddam spurned all offers of cooperation and was entirely "distrustful" of al Qaeda members? Isn't giving safe haven to wanted terrorists--who, according to George Tenet, may have been plotting attacks around the world--evidence of a "cooperative relationship"? And if Saddam was willing to give al Qaeda members safe haven, how can the committee be sure that he wasn't willing to do more for them?

Indeed, the committee ignored the best evidence of Saddam's true attitude towards al Qaeda and other "Islamic extremists"--Iraqi intelligence documents discovered in postwar Iraq. For instance, the Institute for Defense Analyses published a study of captured Iraqi regime documents in November 2007. The IDA report's authors found that when it came to "attacking Western interests":

Captured documents reveal that the regime was willing to co-opt or support organizations it knew to be part of al Qaeda - as long as that organization's near-term goals supported Saddam's long-term vision.

Moreover:

Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda's stated goals and objectives.

Documents cited in the IDA report show that Saddam had an agreement with Zawahiri's Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman's Islamic group to cooperate in attacks against Hosni Mubarak's Egyptian regime in the early 1990s. Both of those terrorist groups have been core members of Osama bin Laden's terrorist joint venture. Other documents show that Saddam financed Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, who counterterrorism analyst Peter Bergen has called Osama bin Laden's "alter ego," and was willing to work with Hekmatyar's terrorists in attacking American forces in Somalia. Clearly, then, Saddam was willing at times to offer al Qaeda's terrorists more than just safe haven.

Another document from the mid-1990s, which was not cited in the IDA's analysis, relays Osama bin Laden's request for Iraqi assistance in performing "joint operations against the foreign forces in the land of Hijaz." That is, bin Laden wanted Iraq's assistance in attacking U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia. We do not know what, exactly, came of bin Laden's request. But the document indicates that Saddam's operatives "were left to develop the relationship and the cooperation between the two sides to see what other doors of cooperation and agreement open up." According to the regime's own documents, therefore, Saddam did not "[refuse] all requests from al Qaeda to provide material or operational support." Saddam was willing to leave the relationship open to see what avenues for cooperation between his intelligence operatives and al Qaeda's terrorists may open up.

There's more, of course, but the Senate Intelligence Committee managed to avoid any direct mention of such documents, which contradict some of its findings. The report is, therefore, hardly comprehensive. However, we can be certain of at least one thing: Saddam harbored al Qaeda terrorists.

Even the Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee now admit that.

A Master Terrorist Is Killed

(This entry is cross-posted at WorldwideStandard.com)

According to multiple press accounts, Iran’s and Hezbollah’s master terrorist, Imad Mugniyah, is dead. He was reportedly killed by a car bomb in Damascus last night. Hezbollah is claiming that he was killed by the Israelis. But the Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Olmert, disputed Hezbollah’s version: “Israel rejects any attempt by terrorist organisations to attribute to it any implication in this affair.”

Thus far, the press accounts I’ve read have done a decent job of summarizing Mugniyah’s early terrorist career in the 1980’s. Mugniyah’s involvement in the bombings of the U.S. Embassy (April 18, 1983) and the Marine barracks (October 23,1983) in Lebanon, which led to the U.S. retreat from that nation, is well known. Mugniyah’s role in a string of additional attacks including the hijacking of TWA Flight 847 (June 14, 1985) and the kidnapping and murder of various Americans is also widely known.

But here is something that none of the press accounts I’ve read today have reported: Imad Mugniyah played an instrumental role in al Qaeda’s rise. I detailed Mugniyah’s role in al Qaeda’s terror in Iran’s Proxy War Against America, a short book published by the Claremont Institute last year. I won’t go into all of the details again in this post, but here is a quick summary of the relationship:

• Mugniyah met with Osama bin Laden in Sudan in the early 1990’s. The two agreed to work together against their common enemies, including America. Al Qaeda operatives were then trained by Mugniyah and other Hezbollah trainers, as well as Iranian personnel, in Sudan, Lebanon, and Iran. Both the Clinton administration, in its first two indictments of al Qaeda and bin Laden, and the 9/11 Commission found significant evidence of this early collaboration.

• According to Bob Baer, a long-time CIA operative who tracked Mugniyah for years, one of Mugniyah’s goons facilitated the travel of an al Qaeda operative en route to the November 19, 1995, bombing of the Egyptian Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. The bombing was among al Qaeda’s earliest operations.

• There is no real doubt that Iran and Mugniyah’s Hezbollah were primarily responsible for the June 1996 Khobar Towers bombing. But the 9/11 Commission also found evidence that al Qaeda may have played some role. Intelligence indicates that al Qaeda was planning a similar operation in the months prior. And afterwards, in telephone conversations that were evidently intercepted, Osama bin Laden received congratulations from his fellow terrorists, including Ayman al Zawahiri.

• Al Qaeda’s August 7, 1998, embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania were modeled after Mugniyah’s bombings in Lebanon in 1983. According to the 9/11 Commission, bin Laden asked Mugniyah for help in executing such attacks and Mugniyah agreed to provide his assistance. Thereafter, al Qaeda adopted Hezbollah’s modus operandi: simultaneous attacks by suicide bombers. Al Qaeda’s August 7, 1998, bombings directly mirrored Hezbollah’s simultaneous strike against the U.S. Marine barracks and a headquarters for French paratroopers on October 23, 1983. In fact, the 9/11 Commission found that some of the terrorists responsible for the embassy bombings were trained by Hezbollah. This is a crucial point: al Qaeda’s most successful attack prior to 9/11--the August 7, 1998, embassy bombings--was modeled after Hezbollah’s operations.

• After the 9/11 attacks, Bob Baer immediately suspected that Mugniyah and his masters had played some role. (I also discussed this in a previous article, "Sy Hersh’s Overactive Imagination".) Amazingly, the 9/11 Commission found that senior Hezbollah operatives were aware of and facilitated the travel of many of the 9/11 hijackers. This evidence was so “disturbing” that the Commission called for a further investigation into the matter. Although he was not named by the Commission directly, Mugniyah was reportedly one of the senior Hezbollah terrorists involved.

• There are reports, although unconfirmed, that Mugniyah may have helped senior al Qaeda operatives flee Afghanistan in late 2001.

There is much more to this story, which can be found in my short book on the topic: Iran’s Proxy War Against America.

Gates Gets It Right

(This entry is cross-posted at WorldwideStandard.com)

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates laid out the case for a continued NATO role in Afghanistan during a speech in Germany this past Sunday. Highlighting the gravity of the terrorist threat against Europe, Gates listed a number of terrorist plots that have been foiled in recent years and asked the audience to:

Imagine, for a moment, if some or all of these attacks had come to pass. Imagine if Islamic terrorists had managed to strike your capitals on the same scale as they struck in New York. Imagine if they had laid their hands on weapons and materials with even greater destructive capability--weapons of the sort all too easily accessible in the world today. We forget at our peril that the ambition of Islamic extremists is limited only by opportunity. (emphasis in original)

Then Gates said something that deserves more attention. He explained:

We should also remember that terrorist cells in Europe are not purely homegrown or unconnected to events far away--or simply a matter of domestic law and order. Some are funded from abroad. Some hate all western democracies, not just the United States. Many who have been arrested have had direct connections to Al Qaeda. Some have met with top leaders or attended training camps abroad. Some are connected to Al Qaeda in Iraq. In the most recent case, the Barcelona cell appears to have ties to a terrorist training network run by Baitullah Mehsud, a Pakistan-based extremist commander affiliated with the Taliban and Al Qaeda--who we believe was responsible for the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

Here, Gates is directly refuting what I will call the “homegrown-only myth.” That is, it is widely believed that attacks such as the March 11, 2004, bombings in Madrid and the July 7, 2005, bombings in London were executed by terrorists with no real affiliation to al Qaeda’s global network. Instead of being the work of an organized and professional terrorist network, it is widely believed that such attacks were cooked up by local extremists, with no support from more seasoned terrorist operatives. Some Western counterterrorism officials and analysts believe this to be true despite abundant evidence to the contrary. For example, as I argued in "The Real Madrid Bombers?", there are numerous threads connecting the terrorists responsible for the 3/11 attack to al Qaeda. The same can be said for the 7/7 attackers--they had clear ties to senior al Qaeda operatives operating out of Pakistan.

Hopefully, some in Secretary Gates’ audience paid close attention to what he had to say about the global terror network. If NATO fails in Afghanistan, we can expect even more attacks from the al Qaeda terrorists operating there and in northern Pakistan. Europe and the United States should be on guard against “homegrown-only” plots. There is certainly the potential for such attacks in the future, and some incidents both here and abroad appear to conform to this paradigm (e.g. the Fort Dix Six). But this does not mean we should bury our heads in the sand when it comes to the terror emanating from northern Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as Iraq. Nor should we ignore the fact that al Qaeda still maintains an active network all across Europe.

NIE: An Abrupt About-Face

(This entry is cross-posted at WorldwideStandard.com)

As many recognize, the latest NIE on Iran’s nuclear weapons program directly contradicts what the U.S. Intelligence Community was saying just two years previously. And it appears that this about-face was very recent. How recent?

Consider that on July 11, 2007, roughly four or so months prior to the most recent NIE’s publication, Deputy Director of Analysis Thomas Fingar gave the following testimony before the House Armed Services Committee (emphasis added):

Iran and North Korea are the states of most concern to us. The United States’ concerns about Iran are shared by many nations, including many of Iran’s neighbors. Iran is continuing to pursue uranium enrichment and has shown more interest in protracting negotiations and working to delay and diminish the impact of UNSC sanctions than in reaching an acceptable diplomatic solution. We assess that Tehran is determined to develop nuclear weapons--despite its international obligations and international pressure. This is a grave concern to the other countries in the region whose security would be threatened should Iran acquire nuclear weapons.

This paragraph appeared under the subheading: "Iran Assessed As Determined to Develop Nuclear Weapons." And the entirety of Fingar’s 22-page testimony was labeled "Information as of July 11, 2007." No part of it is consistent with the latest NIE, in which our spooks tell us Iran suspended its covert nuclear weapons program in 2003 "primarily in response to international pressure" and they "do not know whether (Iran) currently intends to develop nuclear weapons."

The inconsistencies are more troubling when we realize that, according to the Wall Street Journal, Thomas Fingar is one of the three officials who were responsible for crafting the latest NIE. The Journal cites "an intelligence source" as describing Fingar and his two colleagues as "hyper-partisan anti-Bush officials." (The New York Sun drew attention to one of Fingar’s colleagues yesterday.)

So, if it is true that Dr. Fingar played a leading role in crafting this latest NIE, then we are left with serious questions:

Why did your opinion change so drastically in just four months time?

Is the new intelligence or analysis really that good? Is it good enough to overturn your previous assessments? Or, has it never really been good enough to make a definitive assessment at all?

Did your political or ideological leanings, or your policy preferences, or those of your colleagues, influence your opinion in any way?

Many in the mainstream press have been willing to cite this latest NIE unquestioningly. Perhaps they should start asking some pointed questions. (Don’t hold your breath.)

NIE: What Changed Since 2005?

(This entry is cross-posted at WorldwideStandard.com)

In a NIE just two years ago, the U.S. Intelligence Community (“IC”) concluded: “[We] assess with high confidence that Iran currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons despite its international obligations and international pressure, but we do not assess that Iran is immovable.” However, the latest NIE on Iran’s nuclear program says, “…we do not know whether (Iran) currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.” This is just one of many differences between the 2005 estimate, which concluded that Iran was pursuing a nuclear weapons program, and this latest estimate, which claims that the “military” nuclear weapons program was shut down sometime in 2003. (Keep in mind that the “civilian” program, which everyone concedes is still up and running, could quite easily be repurposed for military use. And the NIE is drawing a line between the two without explaining how it made that judgment. See Question #3 here.)

What changed?

Judging from press accounts, anonymous intelligence officials are offering a number of answers. For example, McClatchy newspapers ran this description (emphasis added):

Senior U.S. intelligence officials said the judgment that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in mid-2003 emerged four to six months ago as a result of fresh intelligence, some of it from open sources and some from a "very rigorous scrub" of 20 years of information, some of which informed the 2005 NIE.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the analysts who drafted the report also had applied lessons learned from an erroneous 2002 NIE on Iraq.

Taken at face value, we have here a number of explanations. What is the “fresh intelligence” gathered by the IC? I am a strong advocate of open source analysis, but what “fresh intelligence” was gathered through open sources (e.g. press articles, television appearances, etc.)? Can you determine through open sources that Iran shut down its nuclear program in 2003? If so, how?

What did the “very rigorous scrub” of two decades of information entail? Keep in mind that the U.S. and the international community were in the dark for much of this period concerning Iran’s nuclear program. And why did this scrub produce different results now since it also “informed the 2005 NIE”? Is this a concession that the tradecraft used in the 2005 estimate was sloppy? Or, have the analysts let the current climate, with partisan debates over how to handle Iran dominating the headlines, dictate the way they viewed this intelligence?

This last question is particular apt, since the McClatchy account tells us that the “analysts who drafted the report also had applied lessons learned from an erroneous 2002 NIE on Iraq?” Did the lessons have to do with tradecraft? Or, do they mean they just wanted to make sure that the intelligence coming out of the IC was not used to justify any military action, as it did in the case of Iraq?

The Washington Post, based on anonymous sources, gives us a sense of what intelligence was used in the revised estimate (emphasis added):

Senior officials said the latest conclusions grew out of a stream of information, beginning with a set of Iranian drawings obtained in 2004 and ending with the intercepted calls between Iranian military commanders, that steadily chipped away at the earlier assessment.

In one intercept, a senior Iranian military official was specifically overheard complaining that the nuclear program had been shuttered years earlier, according to a source familiar with the intelligence. The intercept was one of more than 1,000 pieces of information cited in footnotes to the 150-page classified version of the document, an official said.

Several of those involved in preparing the new assessment said that when intelligence officials began briefing senior members of the Bush administration on the intercepts, beginning in July, the policymakers expressed skepticism. Several of the president's top advisers suggested the intercepts were part of a clever Iranian deception campaign, the officials said.

What drawings were obtained? Were there any intercepts that cut against the thesis that the program was shuttered in 2003? Were any of the “more than 1,000 pieces of information” cited in the report contradictory? If so, how were these contradictions explained away?

As the Post notes, senior administration officials expressed their skepticism concerning these intercepts, noting that it could be part of an elaborate deception campaign. The IC then did a review to determine if this was plausible and evidently concluded that the intercepts were valid. I have no reason to think their judgment is wrong, but then again, who knows?

Key questions regarding the intercepts: Are the conversations intercepted between parties that would know the full scope of the program? Are intercepts alone enough to validate the cessation of the “military” program in 2003, or is human intelligence also needed? Did any human intelligence go into this assessment? Are there any intercepts pertaining to the current state of the “military” nuclear program? Do any of the intercepts relate to the “civilian” nuclear program and its dual uses?

It will be interesting to follow the details of what made up this NIE in the press over the next few days.

Additional note: Over at NRO’s The Corner, Seth Leibsohn offers his own rundown of the different explanations for the flip-flop appearing in the press.

Five Questions Concerning the Latest NIE

(This entry is cross-posted at WorldwideStandard.com)

The story dominating the news cycle right now is the public release of "Key Judgments" from an NIE on Iran’s nuclear program. In particular, the first sentence of the NIE is drawing the press’s intention: "We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program…" But, as they say, the devil is in the details. Given the poor performance of the U.S. Intelligence Community ("IC") in drafting previous NIE’s, we should review the IC’s work with a skeptical eye--no matter what conclusions are drawn. Interestingly, the IC now concedes that it is certain Iran had a nuclear weapons program. But that isn't getting the headlines. And after having read the little that has been made public from this NIE, we are left with substantive questions.

First, what intelligence is this assessment based upon?

Any student, or even casual observer, of the U.S. intelligence community knows that it has done a remarkably poor job of recruiting spies inside unfriendly regimes. For example, we had no meaningful spies inside Saddam’s regime. That was at least part of the reason the U.S. intelligence community misjudged Saddam’s WMD programs so badly. (Whatever came of Saddam’s WMD, U.S. intelligence clearly did not know what was going on since the few sources it had were on the periphery of Saddam’s regime.)

Reading the latest NIE does not provide, of course, any clues as to how the IC came to these conclusions. If the IC does have good sources inside the Iranian regime and its putative nuclear program, then quite naturally it would want to protect them. And we wouldn’t expect to see any information about sources in a declassified "Key Judgments" such as this.

However, there are good reasons to suspect that the IC does not have good intelligence inside Iran. For example, both of the leading members (one Republican, one Democrat) of the House Intelligence Committee explained back in 2006 that we did not really know then what was going on inside Iran. And the Robb-Silberman Commission, which investigated what the IC knew about WMD programs around the world, found in 2005: "Across the board, the Intelligence Community knows disturbingly little about the nuclear programs of many of the world's most dangerous actors. In some cases, it knows less now than it did five or ten years ago." Understandably, the Commission refrained from discussing the specifics of the intelligence community’s infiltration, or lack thereof, of both the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs. But it is a safe bet that the statement cited above applied in both cases.

Thus, we should not be confident, at all, that the IC has the type of intelligence that would allow it to make a definitive assessment one way or another. This is true no matter what conclusions the IC publishes. Who or what are the sources cited by IC? How do we know they are telling the truth? If they are members of the Iranian regime, have their so-called bona fides been established? Are they in a position to know what they claim to know? Do they have any motives to lie, or distort the truth? We should be mindful of all of these questions and more.

Second, what has changed since 2005?

As this latest NIE notes, its conclusions are at odds with what the IC believed in 2005. The last page of the declassified Key Judgments notes significant differences between what the IC believed in 2005 and what it is saying now. In 2005, the IC noted: "[We] assess with high confidence that Iran currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons despite its international obligations and international pressure, but we do not assess that Iran is immovable." Now the IC says, "…we do not know whether (Iran) currently intends to develop nuclear weapons." So, in 2005 the IC was sure that Iran was determined to build a nuclear weapon and now it is not sure at all. This is a profound change in opinion and, at a minimum, does not inspire confidence that the IC can get this story right. After all, if the IC’s judgments can change so drastically in two years time, why should we believe any of its pronouncements one way or the other?

What is the basis for this flip-flop? What has been learned in the meantime to warrant such an about-face?

Third, how did the IC draw its line between a "civilian" nuclear program and a military one?

In the very first footnote the authors of the NIE explain: "For the purposes of this Estimate, by ‘nuclear weapons program’ we mean Iran’s nuclear weapon design and weaponization work and covert uranium conversion-related and uranium enrichment-related work; we do not mean Iran’s declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment."

So, is the IC then assuming that Iran’s "declared civil work" is necessarily benign? One of the key issues with respect to Iran’s "civilian" nuclear program is its capacity, with some tweaking here and there, to be used for military purposes. For example, according to the New York Times in early 2006, the IAEA concluded that there was evidence suggesting "links between Iran’s ostensibly peaceful nuclear program and its military work on high explosives and missiles." Indeed, the authors of the NIE explicitly recognize the possibility of the civilian program being diverted for military uses:

Iranian entities are continuing to develop a range of technical capabilities that could be applied to producing nuclear weapons, if a decision is made to do so. For example, Iran’s civilian uranium enrichment program is continuing. We also assess with high confidence that since fall 2003, Iran has been conducting research and development projects with commercial and conventional military applications--some of which would also be of limited use for nuclear weapons.

So, then, the NIE’s conclusions apply strictly to Iran’s alleged halt of its military and clandestine programs. As we know, however, uranium enrichment is the most important component of developing the bomb and Iran indisputably has the capacity. (Again, with some tweaking, Iran can use its declared enrichment facilities at some point to make weapons-grade material.) But, this leads us to ask another simple question.

Fourth, how does the IC know that Iran has stopped its clandestine activities with respect to developing nuclear weapons?

Returning to the first footnote of the NIE’s Key Judgments, the IC argues that, in 2003, Iran ceased its "nuclear weapon design and weaponization work and covert uranium conversion-related and uranium enrichment-related work." How does the IC know that Iran did not continue working on "weapon design and weaponization" covertly? Does it think that its sources are so good that they can rule out that possibility? Remember that Iran carried out much of its work on its nuclear program clandestinely for the better part of two decades. And some of these clandestine activities involved dealings with the AQ Khan network, the scope of which was not fully appreciated until it had already been doing business for years. How can the IC be sure that Iran’s clandestine activities ceased in 2003?

Note that the IC argues that Iran supposedly gave up its covert uranium conversion and enrichment work. How does the IC know that? Are we to believe that the IC’s penetration of Iran’s intelligence services, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, and other parties controlled by the mullahs is so iron-clad that it can know this with certainty? Furthermore, is it possible that Iran did not need to do said work covertly because it has been openly enriching uranium?

Fifth, how does the IC know what motivated Iran’s alleged change in behavior?

The NIE claims that "Iran halted the program in 2003 primarily in response to international pressure." How does the IC know what motivated Iran’s alleged change in behavior? Did the Iranians tell someone? Is this coming from clandestine sources? Assuming for the moment that Iran really did halt its program, are we to believe that a substantial U.S.-led military presence in Afghanistan and in Iraq (or potential presence in Iraq, depending on when in 2003 this change supposedly occurred), had nothing to do with Iran’s supposed decision? That is, are we to believe that U.S. led forces on Iran’s eastern and western borders had nothing to do with Tehran’s decision-making process?

We are left with a number of important questions. And without knowing the answers to these questions, the IC’s opinions are best viewed with a skeptical eye.

Bin Laden's Latest Propaganda

(This entry is cross-posted at WorldwideStandard.com)

As predicted, the latest purported bin Laden tape blames American foreign policy (that is, his conspiratorial notion of America’s foreign policy) for al Qaeda’s terror. The Associated Press has reported translations of excerpts of the tape, which were broadcast on Al-Jazeera. Bin Laden says he was the "only one responsible" for the 9/11 attacks. Moreover:

The events of Manhattan were retaliation against the American-Israeli alliance's aggression against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, and I am the only one responsible for it. The Afghan people and government knew nothing about it. America knows that.

Bin Laden wants free reign inside Afghanistan again, so he calls upon European nations to abandon the U.S.-led effort there:

Europe went along with it (the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan) because they had no other alternative, only to be a follower.

It is better for you [European citizens] to stand against your leaders who are dropping in on the White House, and to work seriously to lift the injustice against the believers.

Of course, this is fairly typical of al Qaeda’s propaganda. In the group’s messages to the West, they claim that their terror is merely a "Defensive Jihad," waged as retribution against the West for its alleged conspiratorial assault on Muslims. In its messages to fellow Muslims and in laying out the Islamic justifications for their attacks, however, al Qaeda argues strenuously for an "Offensive Jihad" waged against the West because we are infidels who refuse to follow their strict sharia laws and offend Allah’s supposed will.

More later when a full transcript of the tape becomes available.