IC Syria and Iraq Coverage

In the same podcast https://www.cbsnews.com/news/thwarting-syrias-nuclear-program-intelligence-matters-declassified-podcast/about which I wrote here, Maja Leans explains an example of IC coverage concerningntwo different geographic and functional issues

MICHAEL MORELL: One of the points that might be worth making here is that this work that we’re talking about now, right, was done during the height of the war against al-Qaida and the significantly worsening civil war in Iraq. So I just want to make sure people understand that just because CIA is focused on one thing does not it does not mean it’s not doing its job in other areas. Can you just comment on that?

MAJA LEHNUS: Absolutely. CIA has analysts with many different areas of expertise and specialty, allowing them to make assessments on a broad range of regional and functional topics. So the counterterrorism analysts and the Middle Eastern military analysts were focused on the war against al-Qaida and the war in Iraq, respectively. Analysts in the Weapons, Intelligence, Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Center, or WINPAC, were responsible for assessments of nuclear programs and proliferation.   Of course, the IC’s collection capabilities are finite and have to be allocated judiciously across many priorities. The lack of imagery of the Syrian ‘Enigma’ facility during the early stages of construction was very likely the result of competition for imagery imagery collection


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