Anatomy of a Turnabout

The Bush administration decided to release new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) extracts reporting that Iran terminated its nuclear weapons program in 2003 at least in part because some officials feared leaks and accusations of a cover-up if the material were kept secret, according to current and former U.S. intelligence officials.

The unexpected release of the new NIE on Monday comes just over a month after retired Adm. Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence, issued a written order to all agencies under his supervision directing that it would be his office's policy that NIE extracts "should not be published." McConnell's order followed the government's recent publication of declassified extracts of several recent NIEs on contentious issues like the Iraq war and terror threats to the United States. McConnell declared that the "possibility that KJs [key judgments] or other positions [sic] of an estimate will be leaked is not a sufficient reason for preparing unclassified" NIE extracts. The order said that NIE extracts in the future would be declassified only if it could be done in a way that would protect intelligence sources, if the extracts would include a "nearly complete presentation" of the logic behind a declassified intelligence judgment, and if there were "compelling reasons"—such as the need to inform the public or police about looming terror threats—for making the classified analyses public.

As recently as two or three weeks ago intelligence officials were telling members of Congress and the media—including NEWSWEEK—that the conclusions of the new NIE on Iran's nuclear ambitions, which had been in preparation inside the intelligence community for months, were unlikely to be made public. However, just over a week ago, when a final draft of the Iran nuclear NIE was completed and approved by McConnell's office and the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies he supervises, intelligence officials and Bush administration policymakers changed their minds about keeping it secret, several officials said.

Intelligence officials, primarily McConnell's principal deputy intelligence czar, Donald Kerr, consulted with the White House before releasing the declassified version of the NIE on Monday, several officials said, and White House officials agreed that the report should be made public. But a senior intelligence official insisted that intelligence officials alone made the decision as to which parts of the NIE should be made public.

The official reason for making the new NIE's conclusions public is that they represent a change in previous U.S. intelligence assessments of Iran's nuclear ambitions. In public statements over the last two years, senior intelligence officials noted that an NIE produced in 2005 estimated with "high confidence" that Iran was "determined to develop nuclear weapons." (The 2005 NIE text was never declassified.) According to a statement issued earlier this week by Kerr, the administration decided to release extracts from the new NIE because the import of the new analysis is that "our understanding of Iran's capabilities has changed."

Other officials said that in deciding to release key portions of the new NIE, the administration also was mindful that if it had tried to keep the new NIE's conclusions secret, they almost certainly would be leaked to the media anyway. Given their political significance, the administration then could have been accused of trying to cover up important intelligence that appeared to sharply contradict its policy statements about Iran. These included claims by President Bush that Tehran's nuclear ambitions could lead to World War III and implicit threats of U.S. military action against Iran. An intelligence official familiar with the views of the intelligence czar's office insisted that concern about leaks was not a principal factor in deciding to make the document public. "We didn't think it was fair to have [the old assessment out there] when that judgment had changed," the official insisted.