Monday, December 3rd, 2007
The new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran “concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb.” No word yet on whether this will affect Bush’s plans to invade Iran for working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb. [NYT]
The new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran “concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and that the program remains frozen, contradicting judgment two years ago that Tehran was working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb.” No word yet on whether this will affect Bush’s plans to invade Iran for working relentlessly toward building a nuclear bomb. [NYT]
So, this guy? He is your Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, Donald Kerr, and he would like you to trust him and all the nameless, faceless bureaucrats reading your e-mail, listening in on your phone calls and checking your financial accounts. Because, see, while it’s fine for them to be anonymous, he needs you to understand that you really don’t need to be, because “privacy” has nothing to do with anonymity anymore! 
The NSA, the domestic intelligence agency that really wishes you still hadn’t heard of it, was frustrated by their growing inability to keep their close-kept secrets out of the newspapers. So between 2002 and 2004 they held some off-the-record “media seminars” where they explained to reporters that they really shouldn’t report anything they know about the NSA and its many probably unconstitutional programs. And then, a couple years later, the New York Sun is reporting the details of those seminars. Meta! 
The CIA has decided to declassify a number of its most terrible secrets. “The family jewels” is the name given to a folder — a literal folder, because government malfeasance is occasionally hackily cinematic — prepared in the ’70s when then-CIA head James R. Schlesinger wished to know what else, exactly, Sy Hersh would end up revealing about his own agency.
Valerie “Plame” Wilson worked for the CIA for exactly “20 years, 7 days,” with “six years, one month and 29 days of overseas service,” according to the CIA via the Congressional Record. 
The long, slow roll-out of George Tenet’s self-serving, Cheney-trashing book/60 Minutes appearance continues with the requisite Times advance copy-based front page story. 
George Tenet’s book will undoubtedly be self-serving bullshit, but the best kind of self-serving bullshit: the kind that’s full of hilarious attacks against everyone he used to work with! 
Trying to convince people you’re not 
Remember 2002, when we were all flyin’ high on paranoia and dread? Those reassuring warpigs in the Bush Administration knew what we needed: more enemies with more firepower, to keep America on its toes. And so Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and North Korea was enriching Uranium.
The DoD prepared a report investigating the work of the DoD’s pre-war intelligence outfit headed by Douglas Feith, the dumbest fucking guy on the planet. The result of that report? The Office of Special Plans made a lot of shit up, misled Congress, spun and abused intelligence, and 