The media has an interesting take on our intelligence agencies. Most of the time they are portrayed as imbeciles, playing at being spies, who have no idea what they are doing. That is, they are imbeciles until they publish a report critical of a Republican administration, then suddenly our intelligence operatives turn into wise elder statesmen to whose judgment we must all defer.

Most recently we have seen this in the report on ties between al Qaida and Saddam Hussein's Iraq, but that is not the first time I have observed this phenomenon.

Before this most recent report we had the NIE declaring that Iran was no longer pursuing military applications for its nuclear technology. Of course, to the press and politicians on the left, this was a dream come true. They used the report as a blunt tool with which to beat on the Bush administration, claiming that Bush now had no reason to avoid negotiations with Iran (conveniently ignoring that Iran was sending troops into Iraq to train terrorist to attack our troops, and, sometimes, even attacking our troops directly).

Of course, as this report was one of those which the press believes, we heard no criticism of the intelligence agents responsible. Suddenly, the press was filled with boundless confidence in the brilliance and impartiality of our spies and analysts. No one mentioned that the enrichment of uranium is the major hurdle in creating nuclear weapons, so abandoning "military research" while pursuing enrichment did not slow down at all their progress toward a nuclear weapon. Their "civilian" research was distinguishable from their military research only by the meaning the analysts chose to give the program. But, as this report was critical of Bush, the press chose, for once, to give the intelligence agencies the benefit of the doubt, and just ignore those inconvenient facts. They also ignored the fact that for several years these same agencies, even some of the same agents, had been reporting that they were confident Iran WAS pursuing military application, though they later claimed that military research had stopped for several years. Given the obvious uncertainty of intelligence in this matter, one would think caution would be indicated, but instead the press greeted the new NIE with glee and treated it as gospel.*

Let us contrast this with the reports that Saddam was pursuing or in possession of WMDs. In this case, the discovery of "agricultural chemicals" in military bunkers, of "pesticides" stored with shells in underground caches, and the discovery of shells filled with mustard gas and sarin has been deemed insufficient to prove that Saddam had WMDs. In this case, as the argument goes in favor of the Bush administration, the press has decided that the intelligence agencies are idiots, and they are simply "rushing to judgment" in order to provide cover for the administration. In short, the press imagines that our intelligence analysts are all morons. (Ignoring the fact that some of these "morons" later became the "geniuses" that produced the Iran NIE.)

So, now we come to the latest report. While it actually is rather ambivalent about ties between al Qaida and Iraq, apparently the press thinks it can be spun to again impugn the Bush administration, so they have once again decided that intelligence analysts are unrecognized geniuses. However, they have been rather selective in reporting on the conclusions of those geniuses. They have made much of the "no smoking gun" line from the introduction, but gloss over the many later mentions of Saddam's direct involvement in supporting terrorism. So, it seems that even when dealing with geniuses, the press wants to have final say over what content is news worthy.

From past experience, here is my prediction of how the press will handle this most recent report. At the moment it is the greatest thing since sliced bread, as they can make it sound critical of Bush. Should that remain the only message people get from the report, they will continue to play up the validity of the report. However, should conservatives or others manage to bring to light the many other mentions of ties between Saddam and al Qaida, the press will suddenly find problems. The intelligence agents will instantly become fools once again, or else willing stooges of the administration. And the most authoritative report ever will turn into a piece of propaganda overnight.

Funny how the same people can be both geniuses and fools, and the same report can be both definitive and meaningless, depending on how the story plays out.

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* I ignored a number of other objections I raised in my earlier essays on this topic. They are linked in the article above, but can also be found here, here and here. For those interested, my two essays on Iraq can be found here and here.