Who is the Spin Meister behind the falsified NIE?

[Boyo_Jim]

I know it’s not possible to say that a single document means the difference between war and peace, but the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE)on Iraq of October 2002 is about as close to it as you can get. Produced by the CIA at the request of the senate, it summarized the intelligence community’s knowledge and opinions of Iraq’s WMD programs.

Then it disappeared into some bureaucratic black hole, mysteriously merged with another CIA document being produced for another reason, and emerged in public months later as a “declassified version of the NIE”. I high recommend reading this LA Times story about the discrepancies between the two documents.

At the very minimum, it was an ectremely selective and entirely self-serving declassification. Statements of of doubt, qualification and dissent were simply omitted.

And here is one example of a mysterious addition to the original document.

To the statement:

Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating BW [biological weapons] agents and is capable of quickly producing … a variety of such agents, including anthrax, for delivery by bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers and covert operatives.

was added the phrase:

potentially against the U.S. homeland

No one so far is willing to own up to being responsible for the public version. According to the Times story, the second document was also a CIA paper, being prepared as a “white paper” for public releaase at the request of the National Security Council.

[Loopydude]

Prick Cheney?

[PatriotX]

It was not so much falsified as it was ‘enhanced’.

[jshore]

You gotta love this from the OP’s cite:

One such difference, the committee reported, is that the classified version presented intelligence findings as assessments — usually beginning with the words “we assess that” — whereas the white paper omitted those words and stated the assessments as facts.

“We assess that Baghdad has begun renewed production of mustard, sarin, GF [cyclosarin] and VX,” the classified NIE read, according to the Senate report.

The unclassified white paper read, “Baghdad has begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents, probably including mustard, sarin, cyclosarin and VX.”

According to the intelligence committee report, staffers asked intelligence officials why words like “we judge” and “we assess” were removed during the declassification process.

They were told that, because officials believed the white paper would be made public as representing the view of the entire U.S. government, not simply an intelligence community product, it was more appropriate to take references to “we” out of the document. This was done, committee staffers were told, “purely for stylistic reasons.”

Style 1, Substance 0.

[Boyo_Jim]

I wonder how far these “selective declassification” edit can go?

Start with the following sentence: “It is unlikely that Syria is producing nuclear weapons.”

So easily that could chage to “Syria is producing nuclear weapons.”

or

“It is likely that Syria is producing nuclear weapons.”

It all depends what you allow to “remain classified”.

[jshore]

@SimonX

It was not so much falsified as it was ‘enhanced’.

The term they used in those old Saturday Night Live skits was “artistic embellishment”.