Although the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) regarding
Iraq and terrorism is still classified (UPDATE: The Key Judgments
are now declassified and can be found at this link),
the data behind the findings is not and has been publicly available for
three years. I have written repeatedly on this fact and it has
been, I am told, the judgment of the intelligence community for at
least two years. The statistics on terrorist activity, until this
year, were published in the State Department’s annual report on
terrorism (Patterns of Global Terrorism). The Bush Administration
tried to not publish the report last year because the data showed an
unprecedented surge in international terrorist attacks. The
following chart shows the bad news (it is based on the statistics
collected by the CIA and supplied to the Department of State):
A “Significant” terrorist incident is one in which a person was
killed, wounded or kidnapped (or there was property damage in excess of
$10,000). The statistics tell a very clear and simple story (I
bet someone who can read My Pet Goat can figure it out).
- The total number of international terrorist incidents, both significant and non-significant, declined until 2002.
- The number of significant incidents increased steadily starting in 1992.
- Most of the significant incidents were caused by radical Islamic extremists.
- 2004 marked the single, largest increase in terrorist activity ever
recorded since the CIA started keeping records dating back to 1968.
- The four fold increase in significant terrorist incidents (attacks
in which people were killed and wounded) was a direct consequence of
the war in Iraq. All you have to do is look at the attacks
recorded and the people killed and wounded in those attacks. Iraq
and India were the big targets in 2004.
Ray Close, who served as the top CIA official in Saudi Arabia, has offered the following on the importance of the current NIE:
No reasonable person can possibly deny that our intervention
in Iraq has
been an enormous stimulus to terrorist activity worldwide. Efforts by John McCain and others to discount
the significance of that factor by pointing out that the attacks on 9/11 occurred
before our overthrow of Saddam Hussein is as trivial and irrelevant as they are
disingenuous. As someone who devoted his entire career to the intelligence
profession, I was shocked and angered to read this in the NY Times this
morning: 
“Several of the lawmakers who appeared on Sunday talk
shows said they had not seen the classified document . . [the National
Intelligence Estimate]. Intelligence
reports from American spy agencies are not circulated widely on Capitol Hill,
and Congressional officials said neither the House nor the Senate intelligence
committees had been formally briefed on the report.”
A National Intelligence Estimate is just exactly
what the
title says it is. An NIE isn’t issued
every day. It sometimes takes weeks to
write and coordinate. Even the decision
to prepare an NIE in the first place is a painstaking one. It is a BIG
DEAL, in other words. An NIE is not a single report from a single
agency, but represents the considered judgment of the entire
intelligence
community (16 different agencies, in theory) on a subject deemed to be
of vital
significance to makers of national security and foreign policy.
If key members of Congress (like Majority Leader Bill Frist,
who claimed ignorance of this report), and neither the House nor the Senate
intelligence committees, have seen the document since it was produced in April,
then we have to ask ourselves whether the White House and Congress take any
serious interest in the most important products of America’s enormous (and
extremely expensive) intelligence empire. Are we to conclude that the “brains” of the United States
Government (presumably those who formulate and carry out national policy) are
simply not interested in making use of the best information and advice
available to them? That seems to confirm
the growing impression that policy is influenced today more by considerations
of ideology and political expediency than by painstaking and objective study of
the world situation.
Once again we are witnessing the Bush Administration trying to
ignore the bad news the intelligence community is obligated to tell the
President. The willful ignorance of President Bush, his advisors,
and his Congressional enablers is creating a more dangerous
world. Instead of taking the bull by the horns and confronting
the issue, Bush and company are burying their heads in the sand.
Just remember that when we are hit again by a mass casualty attack.
