CPE

Back in the go-go 90s, when I worked on the leading edge of American high-tech corporate culture, we used to try to laugh about minor mistakes we made. One repeating conversation was whether or not someone's goof-up amounted to being a dreaded "C.L.E.", or "Career Limiting Error."

Mistakenly hitting "send" on the email in which you angrily chewed out your boss could be a CLE. Accidentally posting encryption software on a publicly accesible server where Libyans, Syrians or Communist Chinese could download it, was a pretty certain CLE, as well as a potential Federal offense. On the other hand, in our hip software environment, enclosing your cubical in a tent of camo netting was actually a status-enhancing move.

All of which comes to mind when reading Walter Pincus' article in the Washington Post today. It details the treatment received by the two intelligence analysts most responsible for the whole "aluminum tubes = nuclear centrifuge" story during the gin-up for attacking Iraq. Reading their fate, and reviewing past examples like Condi Rice and Alberto Gonzales, it becomes clear that, in the Bush administration they don't have CLE's, they have CPE's: Career Promoting Errors.

Two Army analysts whose work has been cited as part of a key intelligence failure on Iraq -- the claim that aluminum tubes sought by the Baghdad government were most likely meant for a nuclear weapons program rather than for rockets -- have received job performance awards in each of the past three years, officials said.

The civilian analysts, former military men considered experts on foreign and U.S. weaponry, work at the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC), one of three U.S. agencies singled out for particular criticism by President Bush's commission that investigated U.S. intelligence. ...

The NGIC assessment of the aluminum tubes was described by the president's intelligence commission as a "gross failure." The agency was "completely wrong," said the panel, when it judged in September 2002 that the tubes Iraq was purchasing were "highly unlikely" to be used for rocket-motor cases because of their "material and tolerances."

The commission found that aluminum tubes with similar tolerances were used in a previous Iraqi rocket, called the Nasser 81, and that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had published details about that system in 1996, as had the U.S. Department of Energy in 2001. The commission's report said "the two primary NGIC rocket analysts said they did not know the dimensions" of the older Nasser 81 rocket and were unaware of the IAEA and Energy Department reports. The report did not name the analysts, but officials confirmed that the panel was referring to George Norris and Robert Campos.

Not that it's all Army Intelligence's fault:

The CIA, the panel said, contributed to misjudgments about the aluminum tubes. The commission found that some U.S. intelligence analysts believed the Iraqis had re-engineered an Italian rocket called the Medusa, which also used the type of aluminum tubes that Iraq was seeking. But neither the Pentagon agencies nor the CIA -- the most vociferous proponents of the idea that the tubes were destined for nuclear use -- obtained the specifications for the Italian-made Medusa until well after the commencement of Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003.

Seven months earlier, a CIA officer had suggested that the CIA track down data on Medusa, but CIA officials took no action on that idea "on the basis that such information was not needed because CIA judged the tubes to be destined for use in centrifuges," the commission wrote.

It was a "gross failure" and they were "completely wrong". They were willfully ignorant of data on one of the most vital analyses in our lifetime. Out on their ass? No, they got performance awards. No wonder Rummy's still in office, and Tenet got the Medal of Freedom. In the Bush administration, one's failures only move one upward.

Update: Apparently the concept of CLE is NOT unknown at the Pentagon. It's just a bit different.