Reality-Based Intel Analyst Leaving

Pam Hess, the Associated Press’ intelligence correspondent, reports that Tom Fingar, the intelligence community’s chief analyst, is on his way out of government. That’s a shame. Everyone I ever talked to in the intelligence world had a ton of respect for Fingar and considered him a top-notch analyst, entirely wedded to the facts as he could determine them. Unsurprisingly, he emerged from the State Dept.’s intelligence directorate, a shop that punches above its weight — as Justin Rood documented long ago — and was the only element of the intelligence community to correctly assess that Saddam Hussein didn’t have an operative nuclear weapons program in 2002.