The National Intelligence Council bridges the intelligence and policy communities to provide policymakers with intelligence assessments. It famously produces National Intelligence Estimates and makes other judgments that gain legitimacy from the claim that they represent the consensus of 18 different intelligence agencies.
That, of course, is nonsense. The Central Intelligence Agency assesses problem sets that Space Force intelligence does not. Coast Guard intelligence has little say or interest in what might happen in Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps bunkers buried under mountains in central Iran. As a consequence, National Intelligence Council products and National Intelligence Estimates promote groupthink. The council’s officers also play politics, perhaps not always via leaks, but simply by assigning personnel with specific policy proclivities to oversee the process.
This was the case with the council’s 2005 and 2007 National Intelligence Estimates.
The 2005 estimate found that “Iran currently is determined to develop nuclear weapons despite its international obligations and international pressure.” After the International Atomic Energy Agency referred Iran’s noncompliance to the United Nations Security Council and then-President George W. Bush appeared to take a hard line, the council scrambled to ensure that Bush would not use its intelligence to pursue a policy prescription that intelligence analysts opposed.
The council’s 2007 National Intelligence Estimate reversed its findings about Iranian intentions, arguing that Iran had halted its program. It reached that conclusion based not on intercepted phone calls or information gleaned from high-level Iranian defectors, but rather on a change of definition. Iran might be enriching uranium far beyond levels needed for a civilian program, but suddenly the council’s intelligence officers concluded that this did not reflect military intentions. Just as generals often fight the last war rather than the one in front of them, so too do intelligence officers overcorrect based on past failures. Having gotten Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction wrong, intelligence officers overcompensated in the other direction. Certainly, the 2007 estimate did not age well.
The council’s recent leak of its new Iran assessment, arguing that the conflict would not change the regime, not only diminishes the council with the blatancy of its political motive but borders on treason as it encourages the Iranian regime to stand firm rather than surrender: If even the CIA does not believe the United States can win, why should the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps do anything other than continue to slaughter Iranians in the street and increase its barrage against neighboring states?
Indeed, this also hints at a much more pedestrian motive. The U.S. intelligence community got Iran very, very wrong ahead of the current conflict. It predicted retaliation against Israel — any kindergartener could — but the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, the two most important intelligence organizations on the matter, did not expect Iran to launch and its proxies to launch drones and missiles at countries ranging from Cyprus to Azerbaijan to Oman. Leaking the council’s latest finding changes the conversation before congressional oversight or TV pundits can start asking tough questions about the latest instance of multibillion-dollar intelligence failures.
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With the National Intelligence Council playing such blatant politics, the question now becomes: Do its members prioritize resentment toward President Donald Trump over the integrity of intelligence?
If so, its leaders must drop the hatchet. Only a limited number of intelligence operators had access to the latest report, as did a small number of policymakers. Either they identify and prosecute the leaker or, failing that, it will be time for Trump to DOGE the entire council, not only for the waste of resources its redundancy represents, but also because its politics actively undermine rather than enhance U.S. national security.
Michael Rubin is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is the director of analysis at the Middle East Forum and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
