national intelligence estimate

National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs), produced by the National Intelligence Council, express the coordinated judgments of the US Intelligence Community made up of 16 intelligence agencies, and thus represent the most authoritative assessment of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) with respect to a particular national security issue. NIEs are considered to be "estimative" intelligence products, in that they present what intelligence analysts estimate (not predict) may be the course of future events. Coordination of NIEs involves not only trying to resolve any interagency differences, but also assigning confidence levels to the key judgments and rigorously evaluating the sourcing for them. Each NIE is reviewed and approved for dissemination by the National Intelligence Board (NIB), which comprises the DNI and other senior Intelligence Community leaders within the Intelligence Community.
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