National Intelligence Estimate
Encyclopedia
National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) are United States federal government
Federal government of the United States
The federal government of the United States is the national government of the constitutional republic of fifty states that is the United States of America. The federal government comprises three distinct branches of government: a legislative, an executive and a judiciary. These branches and...

 documents that are the authoritative assessment of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) on intelligence
Intelligence (information gathering)
Intelligence assessment is the development of forecasts of behaviour or recommended courses of action to the leadership of an organization, based on a wide range of available information sources both overt and covert. Assessments are developed in response to requirements declared by the leadership...

 related to a particular national security issue. NIEs are produced by the National Intelligence Council
National Intelligence Council
The National Intelligence Council is the center for midterm and long-term strategic thinking within the United States Intelligence Community . It was formed in 1979...

 and express the coordinated judgments of the United States Intelligence Community
United States Intelligence Community
The United States Intelligence Community is a cooperative federation of 16 separate United States government agencies that work separately and together to conduct intelligence activities considered necessary for the conduct of foreign relations and the protection of the national security of the...

, the group of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies
Intelligence agency
An intelligence agency is a governmental agency that is devoted to information gathering for purposes of national security and defence. Means of information gathering may include espionage, communication interception, cryptanalysis, cooperation with other institutions, and evaluation of public...

. NIEs are classified documents
Classified information
Classified information is sensitive information to which access is restricted by law or regulation to particular groups of persons. A formal security clearance is required to handle classified documents or access classified data. The clearance process requires a satisfactory background investigation...

 prepared for policymakers.

General overview

NIEs are considered to be "estimative" products, in that they present what intelligence analysts
Intelligence analysis
Intelligence analysis is the process of taking known information about situations and entities of strategic, operational, or tactical importance, characterizing the known, and, with appropriate statements of probability, the future actions in those situations and by those entities...

 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
Confidence interval
In statistics, a confidence interval is a particular kind of interval estimate of a population parameter and is used to indicate the reliability of an estimate. It is an observed interval , in principle different from sample to sample, that frequently includes the parameter of interest, if the...

 to the key judgments and rigorously evaluating the sourcing for them. Each NIE is reviewed and approved for dissemination by the National Intelligence Board
National Intelligence Board
The National Intelligence Board is a body of senior U.S. intelligence community leaders led by the Director of National Intelligence...

 (NIB), which comprises the DNI and other senior leaders within the Intelligence Community.

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
National Intelligence Council
The National Intelligence Council is the center for midterm and long-term strategic thinking within the United States Intelligence Community . It was formed in 1979...

 in 1979. In the early years, the National Intelligence Council reported to the Director of Central Intelligence
Director of Central Intelligence
The Office of United States Director of Central Intelligence was the head of the United States Central Intelligence Agency, the principal intelligence advisor to the President and the National Security Council, and the coordinator of intelligence activities among and between the various United...

 in his role as the head of the Intelligence Community
Intelligence community
Intelligence community may refer to* Bangladeshi intelligence community* Croatian intelligence community * Israeli intelligence community* Italian intelligence community, see SISMI...

; however, in 2005, the Director of National Intelligence became the head of the Intelligence Community.

The Intelligence Community’s faulty assessments on Iraqi WMD in 2002 highlights the role Congress plays in promoting the analytic rigor and utility of strategic intelligence assessments, such as National Intelligence Estimates.

Production of NIEs

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 estimative questions, determines drafting responsibilities, and sets the drafting and publication schedule.

Several IC analysts from different agencies produce the initial text of the estimate. The NIC then meets to critique the draft before it is circulated to the broader IC. Representatives from the relevant IC agencies meet to hone and coordinate line-by-line the full text of the NIE. Working with their agencies, representatives also assign the confidence levels to each key judgment. IC representatives discuss the quality of sources with intelligence collectors to ensure the draft does not contain erroneous information

Challenges to the production of NIEs

The IC must overcome several challenges to produce accurate and useful strategic intelligence assessments, including:
Urgent Requests vs. Lengthy Process: The process of interagency coordination and an insistence on analytic rigor normally push the completion of NIEs to several months or even more than a year. Per Congress’s request in the fall of 2002, the IC rushed to complete the NIE on Iraq’s WMD programs in less than a month. Since a rushed product can result in poor or inaccurate assessments, the IC must balance the urgency for a requested assessment with a commitment to analytical rigor.
Interagency Collaboration: Because NIEs represent the consensus view of the IC, all 16 agencies have input on each NIE. Such collaboration can lead to:
Gridlock, where many different interests slow the analytic process.
Compromise, where the estimates contain only “lowest common denominator” language.
Groupthink, where opposing views are subconsciously discouraged.

Politicization?

Throughout the past several decades, the release of a NIE on a controversial policy have usually resulted in charges that the IC politicized its key findings. Charges of politicization come from both Democrats and Republicans, but normally emerge from the side that does not agree with the policy implications of the analysis. Changes or reversals in NIE assessments over time cause some legislators to question whether the change resulted from newly collected intelligence or whether analysts changed their position to support a specific political agenda.
For example, the IC accusation of politicization surfaced after the key judgments of NIEs on the ballistic missile threat to the United States changed between 1993 and 1995. Some Republicans claimed the IC politicized the findings to support President Clinton’s policy against missile defense systems.

Democrats accused the IC of politicization after the release of the NIE on Iraq’s WMD programs because they believed they supported the policy decision to invade Iraq.
Congress has investigated the issue of politicization within the IC numerous times, as have independent commissions. To date, these investigations have never found evidence of politicization by analysts.

External links

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