they're a nuclear weapon in your opinion though the judgment that we made was that it was a political decision to halt the weaponization portions of its program it continued to fizzle material fizzle material was the pacing element is that that the. at the time required to go from physical material to what. we did it was shorter than the time fissile material. but they halted it. for. terminology we used was because of international scrutiny and pressure but that sense it was a political decision it was a matter of a technical problem. or a change in geo political situation they still lived in a tough neighborhood. that they could turn this program back on again at any time and we also said in that release part we weren't sure we would know if they turned

it back on a more about intelligence is the intelligence good enough today to ascertain whether iran actually does one see. a weapon and whether it has started well i've you know i'm outside of the. government and the access to that but. the director of national intelligence must give an annual report to the congress it's called the world wide threat assessment report of the budget process every year and there are both classified unclassified version of that report and the unclassified version of the report. continue to reaffirm the judgments in the two thousand and seven estimate. that leads me to judge after all the years of experience since they can not say something different in public then it would say in a classified version that the. either there is no intelligence

to reverse that judgment or not not adequate dodges to reverse meant judge or the intelligence is there reaffirming that i don't know which it is but i know it comes out in the same place is this guy for this intelligence to be manipulated in any way for example using the case of iraq it was claimed that it was trying to produce weapons of mass destruction that prevnar not to be tricked. is there a fear that each intelligence could be he sed i mean it for a case against iran. no i really don't because the iraq there are a lot of things wrong with iraq estimate and my name is one of the ones on i was part representing the bureau of intelligence and research we were the dissenters on the nuclear portion of it there was not evidence of reconstituted nuclear program which was the only one that really mattered but there were there were many many flaws and problems in that estimate in the process has changed in the years

sensed to to fix that kind of problem there was not pressure there that led to any skewing there was interpretation of what the intelligence said. by politicians that went beyond what the intelligence community judgments were example of the vice president. referring to the relationship between saddam and al qaeda. and the intelligence community he kept asking the cia which was the p.c. i asked. for to look into this and they kept saying there's no evidence. no conclusive evidence no persuasive evidence and they asked many times he didn't

say the intelligence community says there's a link he says the intelligence community has given me thirteen reports on saddam's connection with al qaeda and when he says that how did he feel you angry frustrated it's not a prudent thing for politicians to do because the intelligence community is presenting the same judgments to members of congress members of congress can ask do you agree with what. and the answer would be i don't know specifically with no that's not the judgment of the intelligence community. so that i back to your original question and i worried overly about politicisation about deliberate distortion i'm not i think that.

the number of instances of political distortion of intelligence intelligence community caving into political pressure from people who have done this work recent books by paul poloi and by. joshua roven are both look at it at this and summers there's not very many examples in their decade sweep they've got basically the same examples and if my memory of both books is correct all of the examples are of the director of central intelligence not lower level. it's at that level a position that straddles the boundary of the divide between analysts intelligence and policy makers the members of the national security they're supposed to be policy guides as well one of the last fourteen years we have seen to a large extent becoming an agent the u.s.

and nato led interventions from yugoslavia three to iraq libya and then mali do you feel that this sort of intervention is aiding the fight against terrorism mali though it's a lot of it is depicted in. counterterrorist terms and part of the u.s. and other support of the or mali an army i think that the. if there's any upsurge in terrorist activity directed at. the west in general because french now u.s. supported with the air airlift capacity it would be pretty small. well given what you said in the west's reaction is we're going to come and get the do you think that we're not going to see war interventions in the future i would doubt it i would doubt it that and i if i understand what president obama.

is the tempting to do. to. scale back u.s. involvement scale back the assumption that the u.s. is you know nine one one if you've got any problem. in the world. that we'll be less assertive in doing it. other developed countries. we. don't have the military capacity it's a very much harder calculation in a totally interconnected world transparent world communications that dangers are going to come they're going to come internally. and most of it to six i think the prevailing mood is if you try to help insiders.

conduct a revolution against a knock yourself or a terry and incompetent regime you take them you taint them and you taint yourself . so you hope for the best sometimes you provide to mr inch you come in after they've got. some motive come of success so that's my sense of the way the wind is blowing your trajectory of the world so i was thinking thank you very much fewer thoughts in your time thank you for the questions and the time. live. live live.

live live. live . no the ceo's i would live. in eternal silence. or implemented invisible.

every day is a struggle. for our children soundly at night. we are palestinian women working in israel. we've done more for our kids than our husbands. we are phantoms in this life. we are facing a lot of problem. because no what operating no good schools. no minutes when you feel south park. ave local what's not going up up is a while in the local needs you might want to community l.n.g. molt will be used. at all and you get. done for

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