Additionally, Robert Walpole, national intelligence officer for strategic and nuclear programs, said declassifying some elements of the assessments, also known as national intelligence estimates (NIE), would allow for a more educated debate on missile threats and other risks.
"Prior to the Rumsfeld Commission report, we really didn't have anything unclassified on the missile threat," Walpole said at an April 27 National Defense University Foundation breakfast. "We need to do more of that. In the intelligence community, when we deal with classified materials, silence is not an assent," he said.
A 1995 NIE, No. 95-19, became a flashpoint for congressional Republicans who claimed it showed the Clinton administration was ignoring the severity of the missile threat. (According to various reports at the time, the classified document indicated that no country would be able to field a ballistic missile capable of hitting U.S. soil in the next 15 years.) Further, critics like Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA), claimed the classified document was politically tainted, crafted to reflect the administration's views rather than reality (Inside the Pentagon, Jan. 23, 1997, p3).
Last August, North Korea successfully launched a three-stage Taepodong-1 ballistic missile, a move that rekindled debate over the accuracy of the intelligence community's work.
Walpole told the audience NIE 95-19 did state that North Korea could flight test a highly capable ballistic missile in 1996 and have one deployed by the year 2000. The problem, according to Walpole, was that finding was not included in the report's key conclusions.
"You don't get that from a lot of the stories running around about the NIE," he said.
Walpole said he would like to know what would have happened had the NIE contained an explicit statement noting the status of North Korea's missile development efforts. "I think history would have played out a little differently," he said.
Walpole also said there were many points he disagreed with in NIE 95-19, which was written before he transferred to CIA from the State Department.
"In fact, if we were in a classified forum I could walk down all kinds of issues that I personally have with that NIE," he said.
Walpole said the CIA published a classified update memorandum following North Korea's Taepodong-1 ballistic missile test. One of the surprises from the test was the use of a third stage, giving the missile a near-intercontinental range. The intelligence agencies did not think that capability would be possible until a much later version of the missile. Even outside experts -- including those on the congressionally mandated commission headed by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- did not expect that, he said.
"The Taepodong-1 was what we assessed to be a medium-range ballistic missile, " Walpole said. "In that entire [Rumsfeld] report, the Taepodong-1 is not even mentioned; that's how insignificant that missile was being viewed by outside experts. No one anticipated this third stage. We didn't, the Rumsfeld commission didn't anticipate it, nobody else did."
The intelligence community had locked itself into believing only a certain configuration of the Taepodong missile, the Taepodong-2, would have intercontinental range.
"But this is important," Walpole said. "If you get hung up in the configuration of the missiles you're projecting, then we might as well shut down. Because we're going to get the configurations wrong. We're even going to get some of our projections wrong. So when the intelligence community projects that someone is developing an ICBM years out, and then you decide that you're going to lock into a configuration, throw the warning away, then we're going to miss things."
More openness, Walpole said, could help the entire intelligence estimate process. He cited last week's release of an unclassified version of the CIA's damage assessment of alleged espionage at U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories.
"When we did the damage assessment on the China espionage case, we wrote an unclassified page of key findings. We knew that if we didn't, we'd start getting questions. And the very process of question-and-answer and developing answers means that you're going to be led to what you're going to declassify and what you're not," Walpole said.
"If your key judgments are sound, then you can look at doing a declassified version of the key judgments because often you don't need the details," he said.
For example, Walpole said a key finding was that China had obtained by espionage classified U.S. nuclear weapons information. "If I start walking through how we know that judgment, I'm into very sensitive intelligence and very sensitive law enforcement stuff. I can do the same thing on the missile report. Make the judgment, then you all are going to have to decide, 'Well, are we going to believe these guys or not?" -- John Liang