The New York Times is reporting a secret Obama administration report predicted top U.S. allies in the Middle East were ripe for revolt in the absence of democratic reforms. President Obama is said to have ordered the assessment last year to gauge how the United States could balance its so-called “strategic interests” in the region with calls for democracy. The existence of the report suggests the Obama administration was more prepared for the prospect of a democratic uprisings than it has let on. The White House has claimed it was caught off-guard when the youth-led protest erupted against longtime U.S. ally, former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, last month. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton initially called Mubarak’s government “stable … and [responsive] to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.” Speaking before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said the United States will step up its monitoring of social media to better understand pro-democracy sentiment in the Middle East.

James Clapper: “We’re not like Sherwin Williams paint; we don’t cover the earth equally. And so, frankly, Tunisia was probably not up there on our top ten countries we were watching closely. So there is the aspect of, you know, the spread, the balance of our collection — priorities, exactly — so that obviously we’re going to work on that. I think the notion of — as the chairman correctly observed, is, you know, we’re going to pay a lot more attention to social media and what else could we do there to extract a warning from this.”

In other testimony Wednesday, CIA Director Leon Panetta said the U.S. would likely imprison Osama bin Laden and other top al-Qaeda figures at the military base in Guantánamo Bay should they ever be captured. No new prisoners have been sent to Guantánamo since Obama took office. Panetta’s statement has been interpreted as an admission the White House intends to continue using Guantánamo, despite its pledge to shut it down.