Bolton: NIE Result of “Illegitimate Politicization”We know what President Bush thinks of the National Intelligence Estimate which inconveniently concluded “with high confidence” that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003. As he put it, the intelligence community sometimes comes to conclusions “separate from what I may or may not want.”
But John Bolton has a way of striking to the heart of the issue. From The Jerusalem Post:
The 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate, as well as the skewed reporting around it, is a sign of the “illegitimate politicization” of the American intelligence establishment, according to former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton….“I know the people who wrote this intelligence estimate,” Bolton continued. “They are not from our intelligence community. They’re from our State Department. It was a highly politicized document written by people who had a very clear policy objective.”
Hypocritical as it might seem for a former Bush administration official to decry “politicization” of the government, Bolton is actually quite canny in his phrasing here. His problem is with “illegitimate” politicization, not politicization in general. That’s because, as he explains, “in our system, constitutional legitimacy flows from the president, who was elected, through his officials.”