OH, YEAH...ACCOUNTABILITY – AT 10:14 P.M. ET:  Frank Miele is an excellent editor and writer, with the Daily Inter Lake in northwest Montana.  There is a long tradition of fine journalism in smaller American newspapers, and Miele continues it.   Here he looks at one of the major stories of the day – the Iranian nuclear program - and wonders about something many of us have wondered about:  Why is there no accountability about the way our intelligence services have botched the issue?

Two years ago, the Democrats and their friends in the liberal media were patting themselves on the back because of a National Intelligence Estimate that baldly stated, "Iran halted its nuclear weapons development program in the fall of 2003."

This was thought to make President George Bush look bad because he was insisting that Iran was a rogue nation that presented a growing threat in the Mideast and throughout the world.
Since it made George Bush look bad, it was therefore considered of major significance...

...The only problem was that the sum total of evidence in the National Intelligence Estimate that supported the proposal that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons development program in the fall of 2003 was the sentence that declared it so.

Yeah, we've kind of wondered about that.

This month, the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency issued its own report and warned that Iran may indeed be working on building a nuclear warhead.
Right on schedule.

The IAEA is under new management.  Its previous chief fronted for the Muslim world and is now a candidate for president of Egypt.  No conflict of interest there, I guess.

So...where is the accountability now that the United Nations has confirmed the danger presented by the Iranian nuclear program?

It doesn't exist. This story, although reported extensively, has not been properly used to gauge the earlier befuddlement of both the U.S. intelligence operations and the major media outlets in their blithe acceptance of incredibly incompetent analysis.

And...

We also found out from the new report that part of the evidence the U.S. had to ignore to write its tepid 2007 report was documentary evidence smuggled out of Iran in a laptop computer filled with smoking guns and burning fuses, figuratively speaking.

The people who wrote the 2007 report had a political agenda, and saw what they wanted to see.  One of the original purposes of the CIA was that it would be a central intelligence agency, not attached to any other department of the government, and without its own policies to push.  That has clearly not worked out.

Between the Mr. Magoo glasses and the Pinocchio nose, America's spies are starting to stick out in a crowd. Move over, Inspector Clouseau; there's a new bumbling cop in town.

One of the great unexplored stories of the last nine years is the degree to which agencies of the United States Government worked covertly against Bush administration polices, and the degree to which Bush overlooked it. 

We should have had, by now, a complete investigation of that 2007 National Intelligence Estimate, which mislead us.  But there is little chance of such a probe.  It isn't in the interest of either the Democratic Party or its camp followers in the media.  Thus, it won't be done, and we will be weaker as a nation for the lack of accountability.

February 28, 2010