NIE and the culture of "reports"

Here's the most amusing thing about the NIE controversy: there's nothing in it we didn't know anyway. Nothing. Just a piece of paper, not even a new one, filled with the most banal of explanations and observations about the state of terror.

As if we didn't know that "The Iraq conflict has become the "cause celebre for jihadists, breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world." As if it is somehow new to us that "Entrenched grievances, such as corruption, injustice, and fear of Western domination, leading to anger, humiliation, and a sense of powerlessness" are "fueling the spread of the jihadist movement."

No one was surprised to hear the big news hidden in the paper - so what's all the fuss about? The immediate, more common explanation will be simple: it's politics. Just think about the press conference of the Democratic Party leaders this morning, celebrating the tantalizing revelations. If someone were to see this after waking up from a five year coma, he would think that the intelligence community has nothing better to do than to write a report recommending more congressional oversight over administration policies.

I went back to the report. Does it say anything about congress? Nope. About oversight? Nope. So here it is - political spin. And not just on the part of the Democrats. I got exactly the same feeling watching White House spokesman Tony Snow briefing the press. Was he talking about Bill Clinton? Did he really mention Somalia? The report has nothing to say about these two.

But hey - did it say anything else that we haven't already read, time and again, in the morning newspaper? The answer is no. That is, if you bother to read the newspaper. And one additional important element: if you believed what you've been reading.

This brings me to the point I wanted to make in the first place: the culture of reports. It's not about the content, but rather about the source, the messenger. It's the celebrity culture of the news cycle: tell me Iraq is breeding terrorists, tell me the Jihadist movement is thriving, show me evidence, interviews, go to places, highlight the data - all of this doesn't matter. However, if you give me just a couple of sentences from a "secret report" - saying exactly the same thing - and you got my attention. Tell me it's "the intelligence community's estimation" - and I'll read it again and again, as if the Bible was rewritten by those exhausted analysts working at their desks in Langley. As if it was not exactly the same organizations saying that Iraq had WMD, that India will never possess a bomb, that the USSR will not collapse and on and on (I'm not saying they're stupid, they've also managed to get some things right).

Public mistrust of the news media is the main reason for this low point of the rule of "reports." U.N. fact finding missions' reports, and feel-good-groups' reports, and organizations of doctors/lawyers/mount-climbers/coffee-drinkers for (or against) racism/occupation/fences/guns/contraception reports.

In so many of these cases, the authors collect the same data that's available to the general public. And they analyze it in the same way (just slower). And they send people to see things with their own eyes just like newspapers do. But one advantage they have over all others: they don't "write," they "report."

And now, back to the NIE. Read this, for example, but try asses it without the added value one might bestow on "intelligence": "Countering the spread of the jihadist movement will require coordinated multilateral efforts that go well beyond operations to capture or kill terrorist leaders."

Are you impressed? Amazed? Surprised?

Or try this one: "Anti-US and anti-globalization sentiment is on the rise and fueling other radical ideologies. This could prompt some leftist, nationalist, or separatist groups to adopt terrorist methods to attack U.S. interests."

Is this intelligence, or just common sense?

You have some free time? Try the whole document. Now take a deep breath. Important? It is important. Methodical? It is indeed. But exactly as my weekly guest, Barak Ben Zur, wrote this morning: reports and evaluations are politically oriented and are meant to assist the decision-making process. They are not visions or prophecies and should be considered with a sense of proportion.