US intelligence under fire for CIA report on Iran

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WASHINGTON, Dec 9 (AFP): The United States (US) intelligence community came under fire over the weekend on two fronts, as conservatives criticised a recent Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) report on Iran's nuclear programme and the Justice Department announced a probe into the agency's destruction of videotapes showing interrogations of terror suspects.
The intelligence services are still trying to restore their credibility following the debacle over alleged weapons of mass destruction in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the main justification for the US- led 2003 invasion.
After months of increasingly bellicose rhetoric from President George W Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney over the threat of Iran's nuclear program, the US intelligence agencies Monday declared with 'high confidence' that Iran halted a secret nuclear weapons program in 2003 in response to international pressure.
The assessment of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) overturned long-held US policy assumptions that Iran is bent on obtaining nuclear weapons, regardless of international demands or sanctions.
Democrats in Congress, who said the Bush administration was overstating the Iranian threat, now took a back seat to conservative Republican critics, who said the report understated the Iranian threat.
Chief among them was former US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, who wrote in a commentary this week that "the NIE is internally contradictory and insufficiently supported."
He also warned that the regime in Tehran may have put out false information to mislead the world, saying "the risks of disinformation by Iran are real."
A top US intelligence official Saturday issued an unusual statement responding to the critics.
"The task of the Intelligence Community is to produce objective, ground truth analysis," said Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence.
"We feel confident in our analytic tradecraft and resulting analysis in this estimate," Kerr said in a brief written statement.
Kerr said he issued the statement "in response to those questioning the analytic work and integrity of the United States Intelligence Community."
"National Intelligence Estimates contain the coordinated judgments of the Intelligence Community regarding the likely course of future events and the implications for US policy," he said.
Also Saturday, the Department of Justice announced it would launch an inquiry with the Central Intelligence Agency's internal watchdog office to determine whether a full-blown investigation was needed on the destroyed interrogation tapes, the DOJ announced.