Spooks refuse to toe Cheney's line on Iran

Anyone who has ever worked in a corporation or just a large business knows this is how it works. Several people are assigned to assess "something". A few wear knee pads.* Others make objective analysis as they were hired to do which doesn't conform to what the boss wants to hear and are asked ordered to revise their conclusions.

Its bullshit of course, but its business. It may affect production, profits or the bottom line, but it doesn't involve bombs and dead people.

Please ask your Congress critter to get behind the Cheney impeachment. That asshole has to be removed from office asap.

The US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear program. The aim is to make the document more supportive of Vice President Dick Cheney's militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts provided by participants in the NIE process to two former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers.

But this pressure on intelligence analysts, obviously instigated by Cheney himself, has not produced a draft estimate without those dissenting views, these sources say. The White House has now apparently decided to release the "unsatisfactory" draft NIE, but without making its key findings public.

A NIE coordinates the judgments of the US's 16 intelligence agencies on a specific country or issue.

A former CIA intelligence officer who has asked not to be identified told Inter Press Service (IPS) that an official involved in the NIE process says the Iran estimate was ready to be published a year ago but has been delayed because the director of national intelligence wanted a draft reflecting a consensus on key conclusions - particularly on Iran's nuclear program.

There is a split in the intelligence community on how much of a threat the Iranian nuclear program poses, according to the intelligence official's account. Some analysts who are less independent [read Cheney's poodles] are willing to give the benefit of the doubt to the alarmist view coming from Cheney's office, but others have rejected that view. [emphasis mine]

* So they're more comfortable when kissing the boss's ass.

Via Asia Times.