In late 2002, with Congress under pressure to give President Bush authorization to go to war, former Senator Bob Graham, then head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, asked George Tenet for the NIE on Iraq. Graham was stunned to learn that the White House hadn't requested one and none existed. In essence, the White House had been planning for war with Iraq for months, yet hadn't gone to the intelligence community to get their best and most formal estimation of the state of the intelligence.

Graham requested a NIE. It was produced in three weeks, becoming the much-discussed October 2002 NIE. (The three week gestation period was a rush job, but still puts the lie to the current six month wait.) Most of the inaccurate claims that made the case for war were prominently placed, including several in the executive summary. (Those inaccurate claims, and the NIE, are discussed fully in the Mother Jones Iraq War Timeline.) Qualifications, concerns, and dissents (mostly from the State Department) were buried. History will judge it as a shameful and deceitful document, intended to help the Bush Administration make the case for war and in violation of the true spirit of the intelligence community. One of the primary authors of the NIE later told Frontline: "This wasn't an inquiry into how can Iraq threaten the United States; it wasn't an inquiry into what are Al Qaeda sources of support. It instead was basically research in support of a specific line of argument... What was the purpose of it? The purpose was to strengthen the case of going to war with the American public…. I regret having had a role in that."

In the end, it didn't matter much. According to the Washington Post, "no more than six senators and a handful of House members" read past the NIE's five-page executive summary. The full document was kept in a guarded vault, where lawmakers could go to read it, if they showed up in person and without staff. Most couldn't be bothered. Maybe that's why they are pushing for a legit and timely NIE this time around. Timely is out of the question; legit remains to be seen. But if history is any judge, you shouldn't bet on it. Once again, Congress will have to decide on a way forward without the proper tools to evaluate the options, leaving a neutered entity to do its work in the shadow of an Administration that has all the facts, and thus, all the power.