Fearing its boundless power and authority will be seriously eroded, the Central Intelligence Agency is mounting a not-so-covert operation - in the media against the Bush White House - for its very survival.
It is “an insurgency”, in the words of a Wall Street Journal editorial, that the CIA is unlikely to win.
However, failure is not a result the beleaguered agency is unfamiliar with, given its inability to stop the September 11 attacks — even though it knew a number of the terrorist hijackers were in the US — and its infamous assertion that finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq would be a “slam dunk”.
With Congress debating the recommendations of the 9/11 commission, which will certainly see the CIA’s powers curtailed and the agency re-made, the world’s most notorious spy organisation has become “dysfunctional” and a “rogue agency”, influential Republican senator John McCain said yesterday.
Senator McCain echoed the anger within the White House over the CIA “old guard” trying to get John Kerry elected by leaking unflattering stories about the Bush administration during the final month of the presidential campaign.
With former Florida Republican and Bush political ally Porter Goss as new head of the CIA, the career spies have mounted a rear-guard action, which consists of leaking stories about the lowest morale at the agency since the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, and the danger of experienced operatives being forced out to settle political scores.
Kind of sad when you have to go all the way to an Australian news source before you find an article in the mainstream press that isn’t taking the CIA’s leaks as fact….
Btw, I scare-quoted “shakeup” in the title because I don’t think Goss is “shaking up” the CIA. I think he’s kicking butt and taking names. And it’s about time.
5 Comments
It is patently obvious that the CIA has been undermining President Bush since his taking office in 2001.
Now that he has a “mandate” (to quote JFK[ennedy], a mandate is a plurality of one[1]) he can now clean out that, almost totally compromised, socialist snake pit.
For years, pre-Bush, there have been constant rumors of the CIA being infiltrated by foreign powers. Maybe now something, through Mr. Goss, will be done about it.
Mr. Goss’ mandate comes out of his confirmation hearings. Both Republicans and Democrats made the point that the CIA needed to be reformed.
Fred, the problem is that the Democrats and Republicans were probably thinking about different reforms…
I know enough about Goss to have every confidence in his ability to get them straightened out (he was our district Rep and was a local politician before that).
Actually the CIA has been pretty dysfunctional since Stansfield Turner, Carter’s DCI, purged the Cold War veterans back in the late 1970s. This came on top of Colby’s getting rid of Angleton and his operation, apparently on the grounds that paying attention to Counterespionage got in the way of operations. Within a few years moles started appearing in both the CIA and in the FBI.
There is an old joke, going back to the OSS, that the CIA is a very clever ruse, it’s a cover story for a real intel agency. In one sci-fi novel (The Whenabouots of Burr) that agency was buried as The Bureau of Weights and Measures Field Operations Division. If only it was true.
Ok.. that does it. You have simply got to become a poster here. You are the first person (SF fan or otherwise) I have EVER met, or even known of that ever mentioned that book, or even Michael Kurland, its author. BTW, just to become more obscure, does the title “The Butterfly Kid” ring any bells? Or am I just showing my age?