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National Intelligence Estimate

Overview

National Intelligence Estimates "are the Intelligence Community’s (IC) most authoritative written judgments on national security issues and designed to help US civilian and military leaders develop policies to protect US national security interests." . The Director of National Intelligence (DNI)is responsible for the delivery of National Intelligence Estimates to policymakers and military leaders. National Intelligence Estimates are written collaboratively by National Intelligence Officers from Intelligence Community agencies relevant to the issue under examination. . Under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence, any of the 17 agencies and organizations that comprise the US intelligence community might contribute to a given National Intelligence Estimate. Senior civilian and military policymakers, including congressional leaders, typically request NIEs. Before a NIE is drafted, the relevant National Intelligence Officer (NIO) produces a concept paper or ‘terms of reference’ (TOR) and circulates it throughout the IC for comment. The TOR defines the key questions for the estiamte, determines drafting responsibilities, and sets the drafting and publication schedule. National Intelligence Estimates can be requested by the President or Congress, or can be initiated internally by Intelligence Community and military leaders. National Intelligence Estimates address specific, narrowly defined security issues.

NIEs are considered to be "estimative" products, in that they present what intelligence analysts estimate may be the course of future events. Coordination of NIEs involves not only trying to resolve any inter-agency differences, but also assigning confidence levels to the key judgments and rigorously evaluating the sourcing for them. Each NIE is reviewed and approved for dissemination by the National Intelligence Board (NIB), which is comprised of the DNI and other senior leaders within the Intelligence Community.

History

National Intelligence Estimates were first produced in 1950 by the Office of National Estimates. This office was superseded in 1973 by National Intelligence Officers. This group of experts became the National Intelligence Council in 1979. In the early years, the National Intelligence Council reported to the Director of Central Intelligence in his role as the head of the Intelligence Community; however, in 2005, the Director of National Intelligence became the head of the Intelligence Community. Sherman Kent, an Intelligence Community founder, was one of the first Intelligence Community professionals to write about and critique the process through which National Intelligence Estimates are produced. Kent wrote extensively about the protocols through which National Intelligence Estimates were originally written, and many of his essays have since been declassified.

Controversy

The decision by the United States to invade Iraq in 2003 was largely based on the October, 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that examined the issue of Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction. After the invasion of Iraq the George W. Bush administration convened The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, which delivered a report of its findings on the pre-invasion intelligence in March, 2005. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, journalists such as Seymour Hersh and Bob Drogin wrote extensively about the October, 2002 NIE on Iraqi WMDs, bringing public attention to the stakes and liabilities of the NIE drafting process and potential issues of politicization in NIEs.[citation need]

One response to the faulty October, 2002 National Intelligence Estimate has been for the Intelligence Community to publicly release heavily redacted, unclassified versions of National Intelligence Estimates at the same time that it delivers more extensive, classified versions of the same documents to policymakers and military leaders.