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Intelligence Changes Led To Revised Iran Report

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By JOBY WARRICK and WALTER PINCUS, The Washington Post

Published: December 5, 2007

WASHINGTON - The starkly different view of Iran's nuclear program that emerged from U.S. spy agencies this week was the product of a surge in clandestine intelligence-gathering in Iran as well as radical changes in the way the intelligence community analyzes information.

Drawing lessons from the intelligence debacle over supposed Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell required agencies to consult more sources and to say to a larger intelligence community audience precisely what they know and how they know it - and to acknowledge, to a degree previously unheard of, what they do not know.

"'Do not know' is a new technical term for an NIE," said a senior official who was involved in preparation of the report, known as a National Intelligence Estimate.

Although intelligence officials say the new conclusion about the Iranian program proved the reforms were sound, the wide gap between Monday's report and previous assessments also left the agencies vulnerable to accusations that officials had failed for too long to grasp a change in course by Iran.

The new report upended years of previous assessments by asserting that Iran halted the weapons side of its nuclear program in 2003. The report, while expressing concern about Iran's rapidly growing civilian nuclear energy program, contradicted assertions by top Bush administration officials and previous intelligence assessments that Iran has been bent on acquiring nuclear weapons.

"The new report brings the U.S. intelligence community in line with what the IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency and several European governments were saying years ago," said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security.

A pivotal moment occurred in early summer 2005, when President Bush discussed the new Iran NIE with advisers during a routine intelligence briefing. Why, Bush asked, was it so hard to get information about Iran's nuclear program?

The exchange, described by a senior U.S. official who witnessed it, helped instigate the intelligence community's most aggressive attempt to penetrate Iran's highly secretive nuclear program. Over the coming months, the CIA established a new Iran Operations Division that brought analysts and clandestine collectors together to search for hard evidence.

Communications intercepts of Iranian nuclear officials and a stolen laptop containing diagrams related to the development of a nuclear warhead for missiles yielded valuable evidence about Iran's nuclear past as well as its decision in 2003 to suspend the weapons side of its program.

There was no "eureka" moment, according to senior officials who helped supervise the collection efforts. The surge in intelligence-gathering helped convince analysts that Iran had made a "course correction" in 2003, halting the weapons work while proceeding with the civilian nuclear energy program.

Bush said Tuesday that Iran is dangerous and must be squeezed by international pressure despite the new intelligence assessment.

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