C.I.A. Chief Will Face Critical Gaps in Iran Nuke Data (after loss of Plame)

Uh, how is it that this NYT article fails to mention that Plame's job was as an analyst of Iran's nuclear program?

C.I.A. Chief Will Face Critical Gaps in Iran Data

By SCOTT SHANE
Published: May 7, 2006

WASHINGTON, May 6 — As the Central Intelligence Agency undergoes its latest round of turmoil, legislators and former intelligence officials say that serious gaps in the United States' knowledge of Iran are among the most critical problems facing a new director of the spy agency.

A year after a presidential commission gave a scathing assessment of intelligence on Iran, they say, American spy agencies remain severely handicapped in their efforts to assess its weapons programs and its leaders' intentions. Whoever takes the helm of the C.I.A., after the resignation on Friday of Porter J. Goss, will confront a crucial target with few, if any, American spies on the ground, sketchy communications intercepts and ambiguous satellite images, the experts say.

When Mr. Goss took the job 19 months ago, part of his mandate was to make certain that the wildly mistaken prewar assessments about Iraq's weapons would not repeated. But as Mr. Goss leaves the agency, intelligence watchers say huge uncertainty remains in estimates of Iran's weapons, complicating the task of persuading the United Nations Security Council to impose sanctions or take other measures.

"How many years are they away from having a nuclear weapon?" asked Senator Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican and chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, in an interview this week. "We don't know, and the people providing the answers don't know."

Representative Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said a classified briefing in early March on Iran's missiles and their ability to carry warheads "raised as many questions as it answered." She and other representatives sent a classified letter posing additional questions on March 9 to John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, but they have received no reply, she said.

"I continue to believe that our sources are stale and our case is thin," Ms. Harman said.

Some experts say they have confidence in official American estimates that Iran is unlikely to have a nuclear weapon until the next decade. But an array of former intelligence officials have doubts about that estimation.

"Whenever the C.I.A. says 5 to 10 years, that means they don't know," said Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former Iran specialist in the clandestine service of the C.I.A. He said French and Israeli experts believe that an Iranian bomb may be as little as one to three years away.

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