A thousand, mostly bad, spy films later, it might be even easier. The fourth criteria these days would be that he [or she, even] cultivates the media, not the local embassy cocktail party hangers-on from the vernacular press, but the occasional “standup” star [not too many staffers are stationed in the region] parachuted-in from Atlanta or Washington or NYC.

Ah! But however Machiavellian has become the process, the problem of how “informed” they are is the question which still has no real answer.

Among the many things that punctuate the history of spying is the long series of miscalculations by the most “informed”. Not only with the most “open” [non-secret, non-bureaucratic] sources but also access to state secrets, as the French say. In the winter of 1944-45, for example, with all the mobilization of “intelligence” resources at his command, Supreme Allied Commander Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower – noted even then in uniform for his “political instincts” – completely misread German Nazi resources much less Adolph Hitler’s intentions. Conventional wisdom based on wide-ranging intelligence from a variety of sources said: It was too cold for a German offensive. Nazi tanks could not penetrate the thick Ardennes forest. Hitler didn’t have enough reserves to throw into a massive offensive. And then there was “intent”: there were peace rumors and attempts at negotiations everywhere, from Lisboa to Stockholm. Result: Berlin’s Unternehmen: Wacht am Rhein, the Allied military’s “Battle of the Ardennes”.

Although the Allies had some intimation of a German offensive, the Nazis achieved almost complete surprise in what the GI-in-the-mud has always called “The Battle of the Bulge”. It was the bloodiest battle that U.S. forces experienced in World War II; 19,000 American dead, incorporating more enemy troops than any conflict before that time. But it was also a total misreading of the mind of one Adolph Hitler and the few German generals who begrudgingly went along. And, of course, Hitler and the Nazis did not achieve their goals – neither a conditional peace but the abject surrender of the Reich that was to last a thousand years. And only a few four months later!

Even with all our new electronic gagedtry, from aerial satellites to infinite digital methods of listening in on others’ conversations to computers to grind out millions of alternative scenarios through logarithms, we still only have “estimates” of what our opponents are up to.

The Israelis – who with more exposure and perhaps therefore more acuity and must of necessity take a more careful line – are probably correct that there is too much emphasis in the current American “estimate” of Iran’s capabilities and intentions on “intentions”.

It is true, of course, that “intent” must play a role in any calculation of policy toward both friends and adversaries. But that level is never easy to discern, no easier than something as familiar as the political calculations of our current competitors for the presidency of the U.S. in 2008 about their opponents and the fickle voting public.

The Iranian conundrunms are endless. Is my old Persian expatriate friend correct when he says that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is just what he appears, a fanatic who believes in the return of the Mahdi, “the hidden” leader of Islam, and the end of the world? Does that fanaticism include egging on catastrophic conflict in order to usher in the millennium? Would a nuclear catastrophe be just another part of the will to death and resurrection exhibited everywhere by the Islamofascists? Or is he simply another clever if bombastic leader, in an incredibly corrupt regime which has used religious fanaticism as its lever for power? How many of the Iranian “shots” does Ahmadinejad call?

That is probably a question that has be left to historians long after our time. With luck, we will never know the answer!

As far as Tehran’s intentions, it might be better for safety’s sake if we adhered to the old adage that foreign leaders must be taken at their word unless we have positive proof to the contrary. [Remember always the cliché, but a truthful one, that Hitler spelled out much of what he would do Mein Kampf.]

But even more important, in preparing an “estimate” of the possibilities of action by a foreign power, the essence must be “capabilities”, not “intent”. Okay, they suspended their weapons program in 2003. But could they have, again as Israeli Minister of Defense Ehud Barack hinted, meanwhile, restarted it? Or could they quickly restart it at any time– as Pres. Bush as suggested in his attempts at cleaning up the NIE debris? Or, again as critics of the whole performance again have suggested, have the Iranians started a second and different nuclear track, switching from uranium to plutonium, copying the antics of their trading partners in North Korea, all the while bamboozling us with their progress reports on uranium enrichment? [Tehran has, after all, been a customer and a beneficiary of Pyongyang’s missile proliferation and perhaps nuclear as well.]

What is alarming about the current debate – if one can dignify much of the furore as that – is the role that “intent” now plays in the public relations attitudes of the intelligence community, and reflected in the public debate. What was once intended as a paradigm of confidential reports to the president, a part of a complicated analysis of diplomatic as well as popular information, has now been turned into a political weapon. That cannot be good for the intelligence community, so recently wracked with a new exchange of boxes in its table of organization, nor for national policy. Can this genii be put back into its bottle for the national interest please!