Top Spy's No. 2 Tells of Changes to Avoid Error -NYT

John D. Negroponte, the new director of national intelligence, has imposed strict safeguards intended to ensure that the government's National Intelligence Estimates are based on credible information instead of the kinds of unsubstantiated claims that were the basis for prewar intelligence on Iraq, his top deputy said Thursday.

The deputy, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, made clear that the change should be seen as a response to the intelligence failures on Iraq, most notably the National Intelligence Estimate of October 2002 that asserted that the Iraqis had chemical and biological weapons and were rebuilding their nuclear program. Those assertions were proved wrong, and a presidential commission said in March that the fault lay in part with failures by the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Central Intelligence Agency and others to validate the reliability of their sources and to share their doubts with others.

General Hayden, testifying before a House Intelligence subcommittee, said the change was intended to give new, critical scrutiny to both human and technical intelligence, including reports from agents, satellite photographs and intercepted communications. Among the focuses, he said, will be "who said what, why, and why do we think this is true?"

National Intelligence Estimates are periodic classified reports, prepared by the intelligence community for the president and other national leaders, that are intended to identify trends of significance to national security. General Hayden acknowledged Thursday that the new precautions were likely to result in estimates that proved much less definitive than in the past. But he said he and Mr. Negroponte would embrace "a higher tolerance for ambiguity" than had been accepted and would encourage analysts to be forthright about what they did not know.

http://nytimes.com/2005/07/29/politics/29intel.html?hp&ex=1122609600&en=8ddf982da2d88a2e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

The White House made a call to Negroponte and kicked off the re-smearing of the CIA on WMD lies. And if enough people believe it was the CIA that got it wrong, then George can't be responsible for the 16 words in the State of the Union and that helps to clear Karl and Scooter's good names.

Good luck with that, guys.

The CIA was right all along with their Iraq intelligence, if anything they exaggerated the threat slightly.

What went wrong was a Monkey Idiot Boy at the top saying "I want a war, find me a reason to go to war with Iraq." That was the big goddamn problem.