Spy Chief to Restrict Intel Estimates

Source: Associated Press

Spy Chief to Restrict Intel Estimates

Friday October 26, 2007 10:46 PM

By PAMELA HESS

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - National Intelligence Director Mike
McConnell has reversed the recent practice of declassifying
and releasing summaries of national intelligence estimates,
a top intelligence official said Friday.

Knowing their words may be scrutinized outside the U.S.
government chills analysts' willingness to provide
unvarnished opinions and information, said David Shedd,
a deputy to McConnell.

He told congressional aides and reporters that McConnell
recently issued a directive making it more difficult to
declassify the key judgments of national intelligence
estimates, which are forward-looking analyses prepared for
the White House and Congress that represent the
consensus of the nation's 16 spy agencies on a single
issue. The analysis comes from various sources including
the CIA, the military and intelligence agencies inside
federal departments.

Referring to the public release of the reports, Shedd said
during a Capitol Hill briefing: “It affects the quality of
what's written.”

-snip-

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-7027602,00.html

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EDIT: Updated AP story new title

Original story: Intel Estimates to Be More Restricted

I'll just bet the prospect of actually being read restricts what they say!

And "unvarnished"--is that the same thing as shit without the shinola?

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :hurts: :hurts: :hurts:

The 2002 NIE contained a warning from the State Department's intelligence office that it did not believe Iraq was actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. That dissenting opinion was not widely disclosed until after the war had already been launched, largely on the president's assertion that Saddam Hussein's program for weapons of mass destruction posed an imminent threat.

The trend toward releasing NIEs started about four years ago, most notably with the White House's July 2003 disclosure of key judgments from a controversial NIE on Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction program. The White House was pressured to release those findings after parts of the NIE that supported the Bush administration's case for war against Iraq were leaked to the press.

Steven Aftergood, the director of the project on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, says national intelligence estimates should be released in their entirety.

``That doesn't mean disclosing sensitive intelligence methods or the identity of confidential sources. But that's not what estimates are,'' Aftergood said. ``The public needs unvarnished assessments as well. Without them, we stumbled our way into the war in Iraq