[Salon] WHERE ARE THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATES? - Guest Post by Seymour Hersh

[Salon] WHERE ARE THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATES? - micheletkearney@gmail.com - Gmail View in browser WHERE ARE THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE ESTIMATES? Congress just passed an enormous aid package for wars in Ukraine and Gaza, but the White House is ignoring news it does not want to hear Seymour Hersh President Joe Biden shares a toast with comedian Colin Jost during the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in Washington on April 27. / Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images. It has been a triumphant fortnight for the Biden White House. First the House and then the Senate overcame meek opposition and at last voted to pass foreign aid bills worth more than $95 billion that include military funding to continue Ukraine’s war against Russia and Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza. The vote was praised by America’s newspapers: a New York Times report said that the issue before Congress was whether the United States “would continue to play a leading role in upholding the international order and projecting its values globally.” The Associated Press channeled the House leadership, calling the vote “a turning point in history—an urgent sacrifice as US allies are beleaguered by wars and threats from continental Europe to the Middle East to the Indo-Pacific.” The pleasure in the vote shared by the White House and Congress, and the mainstream press’s enthusiasm, were more than a little off-putting to those with memories of past wars. Billions of American taxpayer dollars are going to support a war in Ukraine that many believe cannot be won, and perhaps could easily be settled, with more billions going to support the war in Gaza that could cost Biden thousands of votes in contested states where there is intense opposition to the ongoing Israeli attacks. But there was much more to the legislation, officially known as the “Ukraine Security Supplemental Appropriations Act, 2024,” that did not make it into congressional debate or the reporting about it. At least fourteen of the specific procurement requests for funding Ukraine’s military needs, including weapons, intelligence support, general operations and maintenance provided by American taxpayers, called for the president and his secretaries of state and defense to report to Congress about what was done and when within a given time period. The reality is that such requirements are almost always ignored at the time they are due and usually fulfilled months later by junior officials in the State Department and the Pentagon, with the questions and answers there for all—that is, almost no one—to read. But the questions posed in the bill remind some in the American intelligence community of the sorts of deeper issues that were formerly raised by a one-time staple: National Intelligence Estimates. NIEs are produced on request from the president and his senior policymakers by a team of National Intelligence Officers at work at America’s senior intelligence office, the National Intelligence Council. These men and women are scholars in their fields and are committed to supplying non-political assessments. They are housed at CIA headquarters but are known to be fiercely independent. I was told that the president and his top national security aides, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, have yet to request a study that delves deeply into any of the international crises of the day: the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. The White House’s apparent lack of interest in the most difficult foreign policy issues—as the president focuses on re-election—has bewildered some veterans of the intelligence community. “The Biden Administration is wandering in the wilderness,” I was told by an American intelligence official. “They speak publicly and daily of their objectives. Victory in Ukraine and the war in Gaza. Resolve the Palestinian quandary. Checkmate Xi. Defend Taiwan. Strengthen NATO. Restore our economic strength and limit global climate change. “Noble,” he said. “But glittering generalities. Each is a title to a needed NIE that does not exist nor has been undertaken. Where is the National Intelligence Council and our stable of the nation’s greatest experts on every issue? Producing unread and irrelevant products” on such issues as UFOs and DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] in the community. No products on the capabilities and intentions of world leaders and the countries that are the keystone of policy development and implementation.” In 2009 the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government published a background memorandum on the NIE process. It described NIEs as the American intelligence community’s “most authoritative written judgments on national security issues. NIEs usually provide judgments on the likely course of future events and highlight the implications for US policymakers.” In my own reporting on NIEs for the New Yorker, I learned that the final recommendations and conclusions are often reviewed by prominent outsiders in the academic community, after appropriate clearance, to assure objectivity and impartiality [nb. Note cut] before they are distributed to the White House and other vital offices throughout the government. In a talk ten days ago in Texas, William Burns, the CIA director who has been playing a key role in hostage talks between Israel and Hamas, complained that Hamas rejected what he called a far-reaching proposal that would involve freeing hostages in exchange for unspecified concessions from Israel. Burns claimed that Hamas’s obduracy was responsible for delays in much needed humanitarian relief to Gaza. The New York Times reported today that Israel has reduced the number of hostages sought for release by Hamas in the first phase of a ceasefire truce. Secretary Blinken called the reduction “extraordinarily generous” on the part of Israel. He said that “the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and ceasefire is Hamas.” I was given a different account of which party was responsible for the failure of the talks by the intelligence official. He complained about the lack of “guidance” in the hostage negotiations—something that an NIE might have provided. “No one in the White House or the administration asked the intelligence community for guidance,” he claimed. If so, they would have been told that the prospects for a settlement were dim. “Israel is going to kill Hamas,” he said. “When the last member of Hamas takes a bullet, then there will be a ceasefire. They are going into Rafah. End of story.” He cited a classic Turkish proverb to characterize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s position: “We will burn a blanket to kill a flea.” The official added that the Israelis have told Washington that if Netanyahu “stepped down tomorrow, a war cabinet member would take his place and there would be exactly no change at all in their policy or commitment.” The official’s predictions for the immediate future are dark ones: “Bibi will be indicted by the International Criminal Court, along with three Israeli generals. The IDF begins the Rafah squeeze on five known Hamas lairs. US policy remains incomprehensible. Events on the ground and massive financial aid are uncoupled from policy. “World leaders are working on the problem. I could go country by country. The United States? Our leader thinks his uncle was eaten by cannibals.” --