Reality, according to Jim Hoagland:
The intelligence community — and particularly the CIA, which was conceived as an exclusive tool for the president’s use in making and executing his most difficult decisions — has today made itself a separate agency of government, answerable essentially to itself. This NIE makes clear that for better or worse, spy agencies today make the finished product of policy rather than providing the raw materials.
First of all, the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) is the joint creation of 16 intelligence agencies, not just the CIA. The Department of Energy has a lot to say about the nuclear programs of foreign nations (remember their dissent on the aluminum tubes?). The Pentagon and the State Department also have major roles in creating the NIE.
Secondly, the NIE is meant to help inform Congress as much as the president. The infamous 2002 NIE was requested by Congress, not the administration.
Those two distinctions kind of eviscerate Hoagland’s point. But Hoagland has a larger point. The publication of a declassified version of the NIE has destroyed the administration’s Iran policy and the administration was powerless to prevent this because it would have leaked anyway.
But Hoagland is missing something very important. If the Bush administration’s policy towards Iran was based on reality it wouldn’t matter whether national intelligence information leaked. It is only because the administration has been telling the world a lie that the disclosure of classified intelligence has destroyed their policy.
And if people like Dick Cheney were not pushing for a war against Iran, people would not feel the need to leak the truth about Iran’s nuclear program.
Put another way, if the administration had legitimate foreign policy goals, the intelligence community would not feel compelled to divulge inconvenient facts. They’re not setting policy so much as they’re are spiking an insane policy based on lies. Hoagland is right about one thing
Bush bears heavy responsibility for the collapse of presidential authority on his watch. His reckless disregard of the hard work and details of governance has made followership a difficult and dangerous pursuit under him. The spies understand and reflect that reality in their thinly disguised disavowal of his gravely compromised credibility.
All they did was tell the truth.
