There recently was this rumor of an Uranium centrifuge installation in a Syrian spinning factory. It was based solely on the outlay of some industrial buildings visible in satellite pictures. A “signature” case where something that is a look-a-like is taken for the real stuff leading to rumors, possibly bad policy decisions and, in the end, the killing of people.

The “signature” intelligence and WMD rumor was floated in an “AP Exclusive” report based on an unnamed “senior diplomat with knowledge of IAEA investigations and a former U.N. investigator.”

Jeffery Lewis, the Arms Control Wonk, was on the case and I commented on it (see comment 9). I did not buy it and suggested further investigation into a distinct direction.

That comment motivated a journalist to make some phone calls and he busted the case:

After reading an ACW post about Al-Hasakah (AP On Hasaka, November 1, 2011), I browsed through the comments section. One of the readers, “b”, challenged my journalistic ambitions. “B” reiterated that the site is supposed to have had East German spinning machines replaced by newer ones in the early 2000s and added “The Germans should be able to verify that.” Well, I am German, and I decided to do just that, hoping to narrow down the dates when the facility had been built and since when it had been used as a spinning factory. And as it turned out, they were not only spinning cotton there.

They were also spinning polyester.

The “signature” intelligence was wrong. The “former UN inspector” (David Albright?) and the “diplomat with knowledge of IAEA investigations” were wrong. The IAEA and the other agencies did not do the basic legwork, or even made the few phone calls the journalist made in just a few hours, to find that the textile factory was exactly that, a textile factory and had always been one. But they spread rumors of  WMD production in Syria.

The U.S. is killing people in Pakistan and elsewhere by drones based on “signature” intelligence. “They behave like terrorists so they must be terrorists, kill them!”

Such intelligence will always create many, many false positives for every real hit. One big building and three small ones plus a shaded parking lot on a satellite picture do not make a WMD factory. Some family gathering or public meeting in FATA do not make a terrorist training facility. Just asking simple questions about such “intelligence” can lead to better information than what all those agencies peddle as their products.

Right now the AP is peddling allegedly “new” IAEA intelligence about Iran’s civil nuclear program. (Hint: nothing new there, just the four year old false Laptop of Death stuff.) These rumors are again based on “diplomats” and “signature” intelligence like satellite pictures. Such “intelligence” is likely wrong.

Hopefully the busted case of the Hasaka spinning factory will help more people to understand that such “intelligence” is most often inherently faulty and can not be the base for serious decisions.