From the Department of Remove-the-log-from-your-own-eye-first. Douglas Jehl writes critically today about the CIA's failure to date to correct "what senior officials have described as a major flaw in its operations, despite a pledge four months ago that the problem would be resolved within 30 days." The problem has to do with institutional practices that put narrow limits on how much information intelligence analysts are given about the human sources of the intelligence they're responsible for assessing.

The difficulty of working out a solution reflects a deep gulf between the C.I.A.'s operations directorate, which recruits and supervises spies around the world and is always sensitive about revealing information that might endanger them, and the intelligence directorate, which is in charge of sifting through raw intelligence from spies, satellites and eavesdropping devices and drawing broad conclusions from it.

"Fixing an Internal Problem Takes Time at the C.I.A."

Why is this a significant issue? Well, for one thing, intelligence assessments may be inaccurate or compromised if the information being assessed is derived from untrustworthy sources. In fact, as Jehl notes, just such a problem has arisen in the recent past:

In the case of Iraq, senior intelligence officials have said, analysts who produced reports stating that Iraq possessed illicit weapons did so without knowing that some of the central charges came from defectors linked to exile organizations that were promoting an American invasion, including Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. Much of the information that Mr. Chalabi's organization provided to the United States and to news organizations including The New York Times now appears to have been wrong, exaggerated or fabricated, according to internal reviews by the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Intelligence Council, an interagency group charged with putting forward a consensus on matters important to national security that reports to Mr. Tenet.

Imagine that. Jehl cites a "senior intelligence official" as saying that "the recently announced departures of [George] Tenet and James L. Pavitt, the deputy director for operations," have slowed progress toward a new intelligence-sharing arrangement within the CIA. No word from Jehl, though, on what may be delaying any needed institutional rearrangements at the New York Times.

posted by michael  2:55:16 PM  
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