US intelligence chief blocks analysis of Iraq civil war

RAW STORY
Published: Friday July 21, 2006

Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte is preventing a thorough examination by intelligence analysts of the civil war in Iraq, RAW STORY has learned.

A report at Washington Babylon, the blog of Harper's Magazine's Washington Editor Ken Silverstein, indicates that Iraq analysts at the CIA have been pushing to complete a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on the political situation in the country. NIE's are the most authoritative intelligence documents produced by the CIA, and the last NIE on Iraq was rejected by the Bush administration for being too negative.