Received Wisdom And The DNI's Intelligence

By Steve Hynd

Fester has already mentioned the Federation of American Scientists helpful pdf of DNI Blair's unclassified answers to questions from Senators. Dave Schuler's on the case today too.

It's interesting reading, especially since it apparently confirms the 2007 Iran NIE still stands: Iran couldn't enrich uranium to bomb-grade before 2013 at the earliest, has shown no sign it wishes to do so and is probably looking for a "virtual capacity" to build a bomb as a deterrent factor against external aggressors rather than looking to own nukes in truth.

But what surprised me in at least one instance was the Intelligence Community's apparent reliance on open source reporting, which has been turned into an unequivocal statement by DNI Blair and thus will become the "received wisdom" for reporters, pundits and lawmakers. The threadbare nature of the open source reporting on the subject makes the conclusion highly suspect - and thus casts doubt on all the other statements of fact DNI Blair makes, including the stuff about Iran's nuclear plans.

I'm talking about this snippet, answering the question "what is Iran's role in Afghanistan?":

The DNI writes that Iran "currently emphasizes lethal support to the Taliban, even though revelation of this activity could threaten its future relations with the Afghan government and its historic allies inside Afghanistan". It's all very reminiscent of past accusations that Iran was arming Sunni insurgents and even Al Qaeda in Iraq - accusations that have never been furnished with even a scrap of actual proof. Hawks with an anti-Iran axe to grind are still spinning the facts and Occam's Razor doesn't ever get a look in.

My problem is that this conclusion is based in part on a Daily Telegraph report that included an alleged  Taliban "commander who would not be named" who said he was getting weapons from Iran. If you know the Telegraph at all you know their reporting on such stuff is highly suspect and agenda-driven. You also know they've paid out more in libel cases for false accusations than any other British non-tabloid newspaper. That doesn't stop anti-Iran hawks loving the Torygraph, however.

Other than that, the evidence for Iran weapons in Af/Pak amounts to a few small caches seized in 2007. And there was no evidence for anything beyond the usual run of black market private entrepreneurs, rather than Iranian governmental involvement. Chinese weapons have been seized too, sometimes alongside Iranian-made ones - and literally tons of U.S. made weapons have been lost, presumed fallen into the hands of the insurgency. All in a region that has had porous borders since the first Silk Road caravans thousands of years ago. The evidence suggests to me that Pakistan's arms bazaars are still the major source of Taliban weapons and that's exactly what the Afghan government says too.

If the IC could jump to conclusions based on such thin threads of evidence on this item, I worry greatly about all the others I know far less about. But because DNI Blair has said these things, they'll be taken as gospel.