No Public Iraq NIE?Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) has some sharp elbows. During her questioning of Director of National Intelligence nominee Mike McConnell, the senator pointedly said that she expected the DNI’s office to release its forthcoming National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq tomorrow.
I immediately placed a call to the Office of the DNI to find out if that was in fact the case, and the rather harried spokeswoman suggested that it wasn’t — that Feinstein was putting a bit of subtle pressure on ODNI to get the estimate to Capitol Hill before the weekend. Keeping with what outgoing DNI John Negroponte said earlier this week, the NIE will be out by Monday, but not necessarily tomorrow, she said.
Of course, you might not see it. The spokeswoman added that “no decision has been made about declassification” of the NIE. So, unless you’ve got a security clearance, as of this writing, you’re not going to read what the intelligence community assesses about the current state of the Iraq war. Never mind that last week, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) — joined by Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), the congressional intelligence committee chairs — called for a public version of the document to be released.
In one sense, that’s not so surprising. After all, the NIE is expected to find that Iraq’s political scene is even worse than you’ve been reading. And considering that the entire point of the “surge” is to give Iraq’s political scene a bit of breathing room, the NIE will give surge-skeptics grounds to object that the foundational premise of Bush’s strategy is seriously flawed. Negroponte, no great fan of openness, would understandably want to limit the damage.
Whether that strategem will succeed is a thornier question. This isn’t 2002 anymore. Now that both Democratic and GOP senators are coalescing around the Levin-Warner anti-surge resolution, a recalcitrant DNI is sure to get an earful from anti-surge Senators eager to show their constituents why they can’t get on board with the president’s strategy. Maybe we’ll get some resolution of this tomorrow — thanks in large part to Dianne Feinstein.