Anatomy of a Turnabout

Bruce Riedel, a former top Middle East expert at the CIA and National Security Council, noted, however, that the raw intelligence reporting that led McConnell's office to its new, less alarmist, judgments about Iran's nuclear ambitions would have been seen months ago by officials on congressional intelligence committees, who then likely would have "raised a fuss" if this material had been ignored in the new NIE on Iran's nuclear effort. Riedel added, "In 20 years in the American intelligence community, I have never seen a U-turn on a key issue as dramatic as this." 

Declassified extracts from the new Iran nuclear NIE, which can be read on the intelligence czar's Web site, say that U.S. intelligence today believes that Iran once had a secret program to build a nuclear bomb but that U.S. agencies now have "high confidence" that the program was halted in 2003. The document says that the United States assesses with only "moderate confidence" that as of a few months ago Tehran's secret program had not been restarted, but also says that if Iran resumed its nuclear bomb program it would be unlikely to be able to actually produce a bomb until 2010 at the earliest, and more likely not for several years more. The document says U.S. intelligence believes with "moderate-to-high confidence" that Tehran is still "keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons."

The new NIE on Iranian nukes, requested by Congress about a year ago, was originally supposed to have been completed last spring. However, several months ago intelligence officials told NEWSWEEK that completion of the report had been put on hold while "new information" about Iran's nuclear program was being evaluated. While President Bush said that he had been briefed on some information related to the new NIE at the end of the summer, he apparently was not briefed on the full import and conclusions of the new NIE until a week ago—one day after the final draft of the NIE was completed.

A congressional official familiar with a confidential briefing given about the NIE three weeks ago said that during that briefing, while intelligence officials laid out many elements in the new NIE, they apparently did not make entirely clear how sharply the new NIE's conclusions would diverge from previous U.S. intelligence findings, particularly with regard to the key assertion that Iran had shelved its nuclear weapons program in 2003. A British official familiar with the views of British intelligence said that he had "no prior knowledge" of the new NIE findings before they were published, and said other British intel officials were "somewhat surprised."

Officials familiar with the new intelligence that led to the new NIE's most critical conclusions—that Iran abandoned its nuclear bomb program four years ago and probably hasn't revived it—say the information comes from multiple sources that include both public information, like TV news pictures and reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency, and highly classified intelligence, including reporting from the National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on electronic communications, and the CIA's National Clandestine Service, which collects information from human spies, such as defectors and in-place informants. Both current and former officials said that even though the latest NIE says Iran actually suspended its secret bomb development program in 2003, the intelligence reporting on that development did not reach U.S. agencies until this year. The sources said that there is no indication at this stage that U.S. intelligence agencies, for one reason or another, might have overlooked or dismissed similar reporting about the suspension of the Iranian program that had come in earlier.

Officials declined to discuss the nature of secret human sources from whom the CIA might have collected information for the new NIE estimate. But two officials categorically denied news reports claiming that some of the information came from Ali Reza Asgari, a former senior Iranian defense official who disappeared earlier this year while on a visit to Turkey. (In fact, U.S. officials denied any knowledge of Asgari's whereabouts or the reasons for his disappearance.) Officials contacted by NEWSWEEK declined to comment on allegations that part of the intelligence that went into the new report was an electronic intercept report in which an Iranian scientist was overheard complaining, apparently earlier this year, about how Iran's nuclear weapons program had been shut down in 2003.