This Washington Monthly article discusses the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR). "Over the last decade, INR has frequently arrived at more prescient conclusions than the CIA and other intelligence agencies about the nature of threats to the United States. In 2001, when U.S. intelligence agents intercepted a shipment of aluminum tubes bound for Iraq, CIA analysts concluded they were for uranium enrichment, proof that Saddam Hussein was building a secret nuclear-weapons program. The INR, working from the same body of intelligence, concluded (rightly, it turned out) that the tubes were more likely intended for conventional, not nuclear, weaponry."