This is a compilation of the several timelines I–and others–have done so far on the NIE.

November 2006: NIE "completed"

January 5, 2007: John Negroponte resigns as DNI, reportedly because of fight over NIE; Negroponte would move to become a top official at State

January 11: US takes six Iranians in custody after a raid on a diplomatic building in Irbil, Iraq

February 2007: NIE completed; Cheney objecting to content

February 7: Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Ali Reza Asgari arrives in Turkey; he disappears there, and is presumed to have defected or been kidnapped; in March he was reported to be cooperating with western intelligence

April 26: Thomas Fingar announces NIE will be delayed due to Ahmadinejad’s demagoguery

May 12: Cheney meets with Saudi Arabia

July 2007: Intelligence community intercepts communications that verify claim Iran’s nuclear program remains suspended; Senior Administration Officials briefed

August 2007: Bush claims he learned new intelligence exists

August 9: Bush substitutes the claim that Iran was seeking nuclear technology for earlier claim that they were seeking nukes. (h/t Froomkin)

They have expressed their desire to be able to enrich uranium, which we believe is a step toward having a nuclear weapons program. That, in itself, coupled with their stated foreign policy, is very dangerous for world stability. . . . It’s a very troubling nation right now.

August 29-30: Six nuclear warheads "accidentally" get flown from Minot AFB to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana

September 6: Israel strikes site in Syria

October 2007: BushCo considers spiking the NIE

October 14: Putin meets with Germany’s Angela Merkel; news reports of assassination attempt planned in Iran

October 16: From Iran, Putin says an attack on Iran is an attack on Russia

October 17: Bush makes World War III comments

October 19: Benazir Bhutto returns to Pakistan

October 24: McConnell writes memo outlining conditions for declassifying NIEs

October 27: David Shedd reveals Mike McConnell has made it harder to declassify NIE judgments–leading most observers to believe the Iran NIE would not be released

November 3: Pervez Musharraf declares martial law

November 9: The US releases prisoners captured in Irbil in January

November 13: McConnell says NIE will be done "in about a month" but that judgments will not be released; he also says he would resign if results were "cherry picked"

November 16: At OPEC, the Saudi Foreign Minister refuses to make a public statement about ditching the dollar–but he says the economic ministers should discuss it

November 22: Mohammed el Baradei states Iran is cooperating, though IAEA still has questions about its nuclear program

November 23: The Saudis confirm attendance at Annapolis Conference; on the same day, they send the conservative Nawaz Sharif back to Pakistan to contest elections

November 25: Nawaz Sharif returns to Pakistan

November 26: Syria confirms attendance at Annapolis Conference

November 26: Per Seymour Hersh, Bush tells Ehud Olmert what’s in the NIE.

November 27: The Annapolis Peace Conference

November 28: The day Hadley claims Bush was briefed on the NIE; Bush meets with Olmert again; in Pakistan, Musharraf relinquishes military position

November 29: Khalilzad submits a resolution endorsing Annapolis at UN; Condi calls Khalilzad in the middle of the meeting to ask WTF he’s doing

November 30: A Khalilzad deputy withdraws the UN resolution while Khalilzad is in "previously scheduled" meeting in DC with Condi; Iranian nuclear negotiator Saaed Jalili tells Javier Solana that all previous negotiations are meaningless (h/t Danger Room)

December 1: Mohammed el Baradei states that bombing Iran would ensure it gets the bomb more quickly

December 3: Unexpected public release of NIE showing Iran has given up nuke program; Nawaz Sharif barred from participating in election

December 4: Israelis say the NIE is wrong; Bush announces his first trip to Israel as President (h/t Laura); both Annapolis and Iran’s purported nukes are on the agenda; Khalilzad calls the claim that he had submitted the resolution without vetting it bull

Let me know what I’m missing. Eventually, I’ll load this as a permanent timeline page–once I figure out how to do that.

In my banana republic thread, MinnesotaChuck asks the $64,000 question.

I wonder if the withdrawal of the resolution, which went down several days ago, had anything to do with the release of the NIE yesterday.

That–or rather the reverse scenario–seems pretty darn likely to me. Consider these data points:

November 26: Per Seymour Hersh, Bush tells Ehud Olmert what’s in the NIE.

November 27: The Annapolis Peace Conference

November 28: The day Hadley claims Bush was briefed on the NIE; Bush meets with Olmert again

November 29: Khalilzad submits a resolution endorsing Annapolis at UN; Condi calls Khalilzad in the middle of the meeting to ask WTF he’s doing

November 30: A Khalilzad deputy withdraws the UN resolution while Khalilzad is in "previously scheduled" meeting in DC with Condi

December 3: Unexpected public release of NIE showing Iran has given up nuke program

December 4: Israelis say the NIE is wrong; Bush announces his first trip to Israel as President (h/t Laura); both Annapolis and Iran’s purported nukes are on the agenda; Khalilzad calls the claim that he had submitted the resolution without vetting it bull

All of which makes me all the more curious how–and when–the NIE got declassified. Because it sure looks like Israel is only going to let Condi have her Annapolis-based legacy if she allows them to continue to war-monger in Iran. And the release of the NIE sure put a damper in that.

I suspect Zalmay Khalilzad doesn’t care to lose all his credibility in the international community just so Condi doesn’t have to admit she lost her latest fight with Cheney (or did she lose a fight with Olmert?). At least, that’s what I surmise from his snarky response to Madame Secretary’s attempt to blame him, Khalilzad, for introducing a resolution at the UN that the Administration later withdrew (h/t Holden).

Washington’s U.N. envoy denied on Tuesday he had acted alone in handing the Security Council a Middle East resolution he later pulled after Israel objected.

The United States withdrew the draft, which hailed the results of a November 27 Middle East peace conference in Annapolis, Maryland, last Friday in what the New York Times and Washington Post newspapers called an embarrassing about-face.

Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad dismissed what he said were media reports he had submitted the draft resolution "on my own," without consulting the State Department or Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

"With all due respect, there is nothing with those reports," he told journalists. "I talked to the secretary of state a few hours before I came to the council. We were very well coordinated with people in Washington."

"I don’t know whether the secretary of state had seen the text but I had talked with her and I’m sure she was fully briefed. The same applied to my colleagues," Khalilzad said.

"We don’t just write a text in the mission and come and present it to people. We are an organized government, institutionalized. We are not a banana republic."

See, I’m amused that Khalilzad (who as a good neocon might not care for the Annapolis conference in the first place) got so testy. But also, c’mon, you’ve got the State Department looking foolish in front of the UN. You’ve got former Bush Administration officials fighting over whether and how they used midterm elections to lie us into war. What happened to that legendary but illusory Bush discipline?

After all, once you remove the gleaming facade of a government run like a business, you’re pretty much left with massive corruption and incompetence. You know, a banana republic.

You’ve no doubt heard the news that the NIE on Iran’s nuclear ambitions judges (with moderate certainty) that Iran has no active nuclear weapon program.

That’s great news. But I’m just as interested in the back story of why we got this news in the first place. As the NYT reveals (h/t Danger Room), the Deputy Director of National Intelligence released the NIE to make sure it was accurately represented.

In a separate statement accompanying the N.I.E., Deputy Director of National Intelligence Donald M. Kerr said that given the new conclusions, it was important to release the report publicly “to ensure that an accurate presentation is available.”

Shorter Mr. Kerr: Stephen Hadley’s already madly spinning this result wildly, and I wanted to make sure he didn’t do worse.

But that makes me mighty curious about the timing of this decision. Take a look at the timing in this key judgment.

We assess with moderate confidence Tehran had not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons. [my emphasis]

In other words, the most important key judgment in this NIE (in terms of impeding Dick’s war-mongering, at least) comes from mid-2007. That’s pretty fascinating timing, given the time line of Dick’s attempts to stifle the key judgments on Iran. Here’s a time line taken excerpted from this article.

November 2006: NIE "completed."

January 5, 2007: John Negroponte resigns as DNI, reportedly because of fight over NIE.

February 2007: NIE completed; Cheney objecting to content.

April 26, 2007: Thomas Fingar announces NIE will be delayed due to Ahmadinejad’s demagoguery.

June (?) 2007: Information collected that supports claim Iran’s nuclear program remains suspended.

Early October 2007: BushCo considers spiking the NIE.

October 27, 2007: David Shedd reveals Mike McConnell has made it harder to declassify NIE judgments–leading most observers to believe the Iran NIE would not be released.

Early November 2007: Administration decides to release NIE, but not publish judgments.

November 22, 2007: Mohammed el Baradei states Iran is cooperating, though IAEA still has questions about its nuclear program.

December 1, 2007: Mohammed el Baradei states that bombing Iran would ensure it gets the bomb more quickly.

December 3, 2007: NIE key judgments released.

Now, I don’t know what to make of that timeline. How is it, after over a year of squabbling, the DNI suddenly releases a report that absolutely guts all of Dick’s warmonger claims? Did the mid-2007 information verifying Iran still had no active program come in response to Ahmadinehad’s demagoguery, or was it an attempt to shut Cheney up? In any case, how did DNI decide not only not to kowtow to Cheney’s attempts to politicize intelligence (again), but even release these results? Kudos to the IC.

Kevin Drum thinks it might be pressure from Congress. But I wonder whether Baradei wasn’t able to mobilize pressure internationally that gave some folks in this country more room for leverage?

Update: Amanda collects all the war-mongering Bush and Cheney have been doing in recent months, after the mid-2007 intelligence proved that they were wrong.

“So I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously.” [Bush, 10/17/07]

“Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions. … The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences.” [Cheney, 10/21/07]

[snip]

“We talked about Iran and the desire to work jointly to convince the Iranian regime to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions, for the sake of peace.” [Bush, 11/7/07]

“We’re in a position now, clearly, especially when we look at Iran, where it’s very, very important we succeed in our efforts, our national security efforts, to discourage the Iranians from enriching uranium and producing nuclear weapons.” [Cheney, 11/9/07]

Any bets whether anyone besides Helen asks why they’ve been lying to us for six months?

I don’t believe we’re going to wake up at the end of tomorrow, after the Annapolis conference, and discover peace has broken out across the Middle East. I’m not developing some newfound faith in Condi’s ability to negotiate real diplomatic deals. But I am intrigued by the degree to which pieces are falling into place, just on the eve of tomorrow’s conference.

First there was the news that Syria will attend the conference. The most telling explanation of what that might mean, I think, is Iran’s response.

Syria’s decision to attend the conference will please many U.S. andIsraeli officials eager to make the talks appear successful. But itwill likely upset Iran, which has become Damascus’ biggest ally at atime when the West and fellow Arab states have spurned the country of19 million over its support for Iranian-backed militants in Lebanon,the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Tehran has vehemently denounced the Annapolis conference.

"They[the U.S. and Israel] intend to deceive a bunch of people who are likethemselves in a watery conference and make them give concessions to thecriminal Zionists," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said today,according to the Fars News Agency.

Damascus may have decided tobuck Tehran because Americans met its condition of including the GolanHeights on the agenda and would face criticism as an obstacle to peaceif it then failed to attend, an analyst said.

Sending Moqdadinstead of the more senior foreign minister, Walid Moallem, may be aconcession to Iran, said the analyst, speaking on condition ofanonymity. But Moqdad, a seasoned Syrian diplomat, is considered arelative heavyweight within the Damascus political elite. EmadMustapha, Syria’s well-connected envoy to Washington, will also attendthe talks, the official in Damascus said.

Ahmadinejad andSyrian President Bashar Assad spoke today in a phone conversation andissued a joint statement affirming that conferences such as Annapolis"are destined to failure even before they start," Fars reported.

Usually, Ahmadinejad manages to achieve coherent demagoguery, not this futile sputtering. Which suggests Iran has some real concerns that Syria might be seduced by what it sees in Annapolis. Which is kind of what Colonel Lang thinks:

Where have we seen this before: a Bush Administration gives vague guidance to our favored military dictator in a turbulent neighborhood, and the dictator takes a step that might destabilize the whole region.

The Bush Administration knew that Pakistani strongman PervezMusharraf planned to institute emergency rule but did not act or speakout about the plan, according to officials with knowledge of thediscussion who spoke anonymously in Friday’s Wall Street Journal.

"In the days before the Nov. 3 announcement, the general’s aides andadvisers forewarned U.S. diplomats in a series of meetings inIslamabad, according to Pakistani and U.S. officials," the paper said.

Because the US response was "muted," Pakistan interpreted Americansilence as a green light to instituting martial law, quickly deposingan intransigent Supreme Court, which had ruled against the general inthe past.

"One of Gen. Musharraf’s closest advisers said U.S. criticism wasmuted, which some senior Pakistanis interpreted as a sign they couldproceed," the Journal said. "’You don’t like that option? Yougive us one,’ the adviser says he told his American interlocutors.’There were no good options.’"

A U.S. official "familiar with the discussions" told the paper thetalks were part of "’intensive efforts’ to dissuade Gen. Musharraf fromdeclaring a state of emergency."

"There was never a green light," the U.S. official told the New York daily. [my emphasis]

Of course, when we offered such vague guidance to Saddam Hussein in July 1990, just before he invaded Kuwait, he did not yet have nukes (though he was trying awfully hard to get them). Nor was he hosting a slew of terrorists who had already struck at the United States.

I’d love to know a little more about these conversations. The most obvious question, of course, pertains to the role of Dick Cheney in these purported "intensive efforts" to dissuade General Musharraf from imposing martial law. Was this vague guidance just one more consequence of having Dick in charge of Pakistan policy?

The Saudis appear to be moving three chess pieces at once. I won’t pretend to know what the moves mean. But I’d suggest that the coincidence of the three moves might suggest they’re taking an upper hand in the US policy-making in the Middle East.

Nawaz Sharif

First data point: after preventing former Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from returning to Pakistan several weeks ago, the Saudis now appear to be forcing his return on Pervez Musharraf.

Mr. Sharif met Saudi King Abdullah in Riyadh yesterday evening, toclear his passage. Previously, Saudi Arabia had been complicit inkeeping Mr. Sharif forcibly in the country under an agreement with Gen.Musharraf, who had told the kingdom’s royal family that it was neededto ensure stability in Pakistan.

However, Saudi Arabia was angered when Gen. Musharraf allowedanother opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, back to Pakistan. The Saudishave always been sympathetic to Mr. Sharif’s pro-religion politics,whereas Ms. Bhutto represents the forces of secularism.

When Mr. Sharif landed in Pakistan in September this year, he wasquickly bundled off to Saudi Arabia by the Musharraf regime. This time,it seems unlikely that Mr. Sharif will be sent packing, as the Saudisare no longer willing to keep him. While Ms. Bhutto has engaged insporadic power-sharing talks with Gen. Musharraf, Mr. Sharif hasdoggedly refused to negotiate with the general.

Musharraf made an unexpected trip to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, at which he discussed Sharif’s return. And Sharif apparently met with the chief of the ISI.

Musharrafhad made a brief visit to Saudi Arabia on November 20 where he met theKing and apparently discussed the issue of Sharif’s return.

Though the military ruler’s spokesmansaid there was no contact between Musharraf and Sharif, it is believedthat Sharif met Lt Gen Nadeem Taj, chief of the Inter-ServicesIntelligence agency, who accompanied Musharraf to Riyadh.

So we’ve got a religious conservative returning to Pakistan in time to contest the election for President–with Saudi support and the potential involvement of the ISI.

Saudis to Attend Annapolis Peace Conference

And then, on the very same day that Sharif was finalizing his plans for return to Pakistan with King Abdullah, the Saudis announced they would attend the Middle East peace conference to be held in Annapolis starting Tuesday.

The US-brokered Annapolis peace conference was given a significantboost yesterday when heavyweight Saudi Arabia decided to send itsforeign minister to the launch of the first peace talks betweenIsraelis and Palestinians in seven years. Syria, Israel’s mostimplacable Arab enemy, signalled that it was now also likely to attend.

PrinceSaud al-Faisal said he would be taking part in next Tuesday’s Marylandsummit as part of an Arab "consensus" of support for the Palestinians -despite near-universal gloom about the prospects of agreement on thetoughest issues.

The decision had as much to do with Arab consensus as it has to do with any events in Pakistan. For whatever reason, it appears the Arab states may believe the Saudi proposal–normalization in return for the pre-67 borders–may be on the table. It even appears possible that Syria will win recognition of its right to the Golan Heights, pretty remarkable given Israel’s apparently successful recent strike in Syria.

Of significance, Bush will personally participate in the Annapolis conference, which might be read as a signal for his support of Condi’s attempts at peace-making over Cheney’s attempts to foment war. And it surely will give whatever discussions occur real emphasis.

"Serious Person" Michael O’Hanlon and  escalation surge architect Fred Kagan end their op-ed with the following words.

There was a time when volatility in places like Pakistan was mostly ahumanitarian worry; today it is as much a threat to our basic securityas Soviet tanks once were. We must be militarily and diplomaticallyprepared to keep ourselves safe in such a world. Pakistan may be thenext big test. [my emphasis]

I’m just a DFH and not a "serious person" or anything. But I am certain they have this wrong–dead wrong. It highlights the problem of neoconservatism–an acute myopia that therefore cannot see a problem until we’re already in the thick of it and until they can make an argument–however specious–that the only solution is military.

The way in which O’Hanlon and Kagan conceive of Pakistan "becoming the next big test" is the perfect illustration of this. They describe the events that need to occur for them to take some action–and of course, action is exclusively military.

AS the government of Pakistan totters, we must face a fact: the UnitedStates simply could not stand by as a nuclear-armed Pakistan descendedinto the abyss. Nor would it be strategically prudent to withdraw ourforces from an improving situation in Iraq to cope with a deterioratingone in Pakistan. We need to think — now — about our feasible militaryoptions in Pakistan, should it really come to that. [my emphasis]

Note, "could not stand by" … "should it come to that." They’re only considering action if Pakistan "descends into the abyss." Otherwise, here we are standing by.

Couple that with their ignorant assertion that, "There was a time when volatility in places like Pakistan was mostly ahumanitarian worry," and you see the problem. They would not–and did not–consider action at a time when non-military solutions were the obvious solution to the problem, when AQ Khan and his nukes didn’t have us by the nuts. As I said last year when I was earning Matt Bai’s wrath, the time to address these problems is before they’ve exploded, while we’re still nominally allies. Because we’re going to have to do nation-building anyway, whether or not Pakistan falls into the abyss, if we want to prevent its extremists from accruing more power. Had we done it six years ago, when Musharraf took the risk of cooperating with us after 9/11 and when he was begging for a textile trade agreement so he could create jobs, we ignored him. Now, it’s going to take a lot more than some textile factories to find a solution to the crisis, peaceful or no.

But O’Hanlon and Kagan apparently can’t see that, because they’re looking in all the wrong places.

I’m a determined skeptic about broadcast "accidents." But for the life of me, I can’t understand the precise goal of allowing a discussion about not discussing the falling dollar at the OPEC summit to be caught on tape. Here’s the Financial Times’ version of events–which depicts it as disagreement about the underlying issue. 

In a landmark summit, leaders of the Organisation of the PetroleumExporting Countries are meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, were dividedover how they should respond to the weakness of the US dollar, whichhas fallen 16 per cent this year against a basket of leading currencies.

Thedollar has dropped 44 per cent against the euro since Opec leaders lastmet in Caracas, Venezuela in 2000. Opec members are also divided aboutwhether the group should seek to play a greater role in world politicsas well as in the oil market.

The disagreement was revealed whena ministerial meeting Friday afternoon, supposed to be in closedsession, was accidentally broadcast live to reporters for about 30minutes, before Saudi officials cut off the transmission.

But look atBloomberg’s version:

Saudi Arabia, the world’s largestcrude oil exporter, rejected a proposal by Iran and Venezuela todiscuss the weak dollar at this weekend’s OPEC summit in Riyadh,saying it didn’t want the U.S. currency to “collapse.”                  

Saudi Arabia won’t discuss pricing oil in currencies otherthan the dollar, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisalsaid, speaking at a meeting of oil and finance ministers todaythat was accidentally broadcast to journalists.           

The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, whichpumps more than 40 percent of the world’s oil, has seen itsrevenue diminish because of the decline in the dollar over thepast three years. OPEC holds a heads of state summit in Riyadhtomorrow.           

“As for the monetary aspect and the dollar I would like toask his Excellency, the minister of Iran, to leave this questionto the appropriate party, the ministers of finance, withoutmentioning that we gave them this task so that there won’t benegative impact from OPEC,” Al-Faisal said, speaking inreaction to an Iranian proposal to discuss the currency.

Note carefully–what al-Faisal rejected was the (public) discussion of the dollar, not a consideration of whether to move away from the dollar. He left that task to the ministers of finance, which suggests he, too, thinks it worthy of consideration. He just wants that consideration to be "secret." Whoops.

I thought, at first, that whoever "accidentally" taped this wanted to expose Venezuelan and Iranian interest in moving away from the dollar. But that’s not exactly a secret to anyone paying attention. So if this is indeed intentional, why broadcast a discussion about not making something public, thereby making it public? Does it reflect dissent within the Saudi family over whether they–and OPEC–should jettison the dollar?

Thus far, the broadcast statements haven’t accelerated the decline of the dollar. Perhaps the markets have already adjusted to the eventual move away from dollars (not). Or perhaps they’re as confused by this exchange as I am.