McConnell revives Iran doubts
By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/14257564-d458-11dc-a8c6-0000779fd2ac.html
February 6 2008 02:00

The senior US intelligence official yesterday stressed that a recent report on Iran had concluded that Tehran had halted only one part of its alleged nuclear weapons programme.

Admiral Michael McConnell, director of national intelligence, said the November national intelligence estimate had concluded that Tehran had ceased only efforts to covertly enrich uranium and design nuclear warheads. “The only thing that they’ve halted was nuclear weapons design, which is probably the least significant part of the programme,” he told the Senate intelligence committee.

Adm McConnell said Iran continued to develop uranium enrichment technology and longer-range ballistic missiles.

Critics of the US administration’s approach on Iran had seized on the NIE as evidence that the US had exaggerated the threat. In response, Robert Gates, defence secretary, gave a tough speech on Iran a few days later, stressing that the report had confirmed for the first time that Tehran had established a nuclear weapons programme.

A spokesman for Adm McConnell said yesterday he was not backing away from the NIE’s conclusions but simply concerned that there had been too much focus on one element of the report.

U.S. Spy Chief Retreats on Iran Estimate
By ELI LAKE
Staff Reporter of the Sun
February 6, 2008
http://www.nysun.com/article/70818

WASHINGTON ó The director of national intelligence is backing away from his agency’s assessment late last year that Iran had halted its nuclear program, saying he wishes he had written the unclassified version of the document in a different manner.

At a hearing yesterday of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the intelligence director, Michael McConnell, said, “If I had ’til now to think about it, I probably would change a few things.” He later added, “I would change the way we describe the Iranian nuclear program. I would have included that there are the component parts, that the portion of it, maybe the least significant, had halted.”

Mr. McConnell was referring to the specific Iranian program to design potential nuclear warheads, which the December estimate said had halted in 2003. But in his opening testimony, Mr. McConnell noted that two other components of the nuclear program were moving ahead ó the enrichment of uranium, which he said was the most difficult part of making a bomb, and the development of long-range missiles capable of hitting North Africa and Europe.

How they’ve survived all the scandals is beyond me. We really need to clean house there. There’s a ton of bathwater and precious little baby in there.

Those cats at Mossad are some bad mutha- (shut your mouth!)…I’m only talkin’ ’bout Mossad.

The Democrats may regret kicking this particular can down the road…

One of the great omissions of the MSM in 2002 was US nuclear history. We are VERY good at post-facto nucelar evaluation; we are very bad at anticipatory nuclear evaluation. Thus, our intel services were surprised by Red China getting the Bomb in the 60s and Pakistan in the 90s.

We underestimated Saddam’s WMD before the Gulf war, and over estimated it after.

What reason do we have to think that his has changed? (The repeated dance of evasion and deception by Saddam, however, in the face of UN inspections, make that period rather unique.)

-Orson