Of the coverage today of the recent National Intelligence report that discusses how Iran is not building a nuclear bomb, I find this excerpt very interesting from today's New York Times:

Intelligence officials had said just weeks ago they were ending the practice of declassifying parts of intelligence estimates, citing concerns that analysts might alter their judgments if they knew the reports would be widely publicized.
But in a statement on Monday, Donald M. Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, said that since the new estimate was at odds with the 2005 assessment — and thus at odds with public statements by top officials about Iran — “we felt it was important to release this information to ensure that an accurate presentation is available.”

Simply put, they didn't want to publish the report, but they had to because the administration was inaccurately portraying Iran. Which makes me wonder, don't the people who write the National Intelligence reports talk to the administration peeps discussing policy? In fact, don't they work for the same administration? Aren't we all on the same team.

The New York Times gets it. They carefully noted the timing of when the researchers were filing the report versus what President Bush and V.P. Cheney were saying publicly.

NOTE: Excerpt from New York Times, December 4, 2007. "U.S. Finding Says Iran Halted Nuclear Arms Efforts in 2003," Page A1.