The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iran is out, but I'll leave the serious analysis to Thomas Joscelyn, who should have something up in this space shortly. Still I think it's worth pointing out how ridiculous some of the claims being made about the NIE process are, almost all of which tie back to Gareth Porter. We've documented some of Porter's BS stories here in the past, and the description of Porter's employer, IPS, is a dead give away that their work product isn't news, but activism--they describe themselves as "civil society's leading news agency, [...] an independent voice from the South and for development, delving into globalisation for the stories underneath."
Still, this quote from a November 8 story by Porter has been linked by numerous bloggers, including Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly and Bradford Plumer at the New Republic. Here's the bit that seems to be of interest to the left:
A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear programme, and thus make the document more supportive of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts of the process provided by participants to two former Central Intelligence Agency officers.
But this pressure on intelligence analysts, obviously instigated by Cheney himself, has not produced a draft estimate without those dissenting views, these sources say. The White House has now apparently decided to release the unsatisfactory draft NIE, but without making its key findings public.
Again, Porter has no source with first-hand knowledge of any of this. He's playing a game of whisper down the lane, if he's to be believed at all, same as he did when he reported that Admiral Fallon had called General Petraeus "an ass-kissing little chicken-shit" based not on sources familiar with the meeting but "familiar with reports of the meeting." And, of course, Porter's reporting totally missed the mark again this time. These weren't "dissenting judgments" at all, they were the reports "primary conclusions" as Drum notes, and the administration has released the estimate--contrary to Porter's earlier reporting. If Porter actually knows anyone familiar with the current NIE process, it doesn't show.
