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BASIC PRESS RELEASEIt's Still SNAFU for U.S. Intelligence Community21OCTOBER 2005 The release in March this year of the report of "The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction" (known as the Silberman-Robb Commission) was heralded as an important first step in helping the intelligence community to make the necessary changes to deal with critical security challenges, such as the proliferation of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and international terrorism. It is critical that lessons from the WMD intelligence failures over Iraq are completed if we are to avoid similar mistakes in the future. But the Commission failed in its job, according to a new BASIC report, "See, Speak, and Hear No Incompetence: An Analysis of the Findings of The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction". The Commission's recommendations were not particularly impressive. Most involved initiatives that were already in the works before the Commission released its report, and doubts remain about how effective they will be. Had all the proposed reorganizations been in place four years ago, there is nothing to suggest that the intelligence agencies or the Bush administration would have reached more accurate conclusions. The BASIC report finds that the Commission avoided dealing with the 'politics of intelligence': a problem that is likely to continue to fester. The full report is available at http://www.basicint.org/pubs/Research/05WMD.pdf. For further details or an interview with the
author, David Isenberg, contact:
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