November 13, 2004
YOU MEAN WE'RE STUCK WITH THE COWBOY INSTEAD OF CABANA BOY?:
The C.I.A. Versus Bush (DAVID BROOKS, 11/13/04, NY Times)
Now that he's been returned to office, President Bush is going to have to differentiate between his opponents and his enemies. His opponents are found in the Democratic Party. His enemies are in certain offices of the Central Intelligence Agency.Over the past several months, as much of official Washington looked on wide-eyed and agog, many in the C.I.A. bureaucracy have waged an unabashed effort to undermine the current administration. [...]
The White House-C.I.A. relationship became dysfunctional, and while the blame was certainly not all on one side, Langley was engaged in slow-motion, brazen insubordination, which violated all standards of honorable public service. It was also incredibly stupid, since C.I.A. officials were betting their agency on a Kerry victory.
It would be extremely healthy for the Administration to root out the Realists at CIA and State, which requires civil service rule changes, one of the quiet revolutions the President has been effecting.
MORE (via Kevin Whited):
Deputy Chief Resigns From CIA: Agency Is Said to Be in Turmoil Under New Director Goss (Dana Priest and Walter Pincus, November 13, 2004, Washington Post)
The deputy director of the CIA resigned yesterday after a series of confrontations over the past week between senior operations officials and CIA Director Porter J. Goss's new chief of staff that have left the agency in turmoil, according to several current and former CIA officials.John E. McLaughlin, a 32-year CIA veteran who was acting director for two months this summer until Goss took over, resigned after warning Goss that his top aide, former Capitol Hill staff member Patrick Murray, was treating senior officials disrespectfully and risked widespread resignations, the officials said.
You go, Goss! Posted by Orrin Judd at November 13, 2004 8:17 AM
It would be nice if they could priitize the CIA and turn Langley into, say, a new Fairfax Community College campus, but I can think of better places, like Social Security, to wage the privitization battle next year. Better to increase the budget for military intellegence operations within the Pentagon if the CIA continues to operatie under the Joseph Wilson school of espionage, and let Porter Goss tell hin underlings that Daniel Patrick Moynihan may have had the right idea in the 1980s when he said the CIA wasn't competent enough to justify its own continued existance.
Posted by: John at November 13, 2004 9:04 AMJohn:
Just fire the bureaucracy and make it open source. Admiral Poindexter could set up a set of information markets pretty easily. Indeed, there are already private ones springing up.
Posted by: oj at November 13, 2004 9:06 AMJudging by all the whining here, the transformation of CIA is well under way:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A46580-2004Nov12?language=printer
Posted by: kevin whited at November 13, 2004 9:16 AMGoss knows well the inner workings of CIA.
As soon as his Molly Maids have dusted out the GS-27 dinosaurs who roam the halls looking for low-hanging leaves, they can drive over to State and repeat the process.
Posted by: John J. Coupal at November 13, 2004 10:05 AMRisk widespread resignations?...........please don't throw me in the briar patch.
Posted by: ed at November 13, 2004 10:44 AMBoy, talk about your dream jobs. I would pay the government money to be Goss' cos with orders to be rude and honest and drive all the top level officers to resign.
Posted by: David Cohen at November 13, 2004 11:04 AMJust as another addentium to this thread, here's the "startling" analysis that will be offered up by Michael Scheuer to the public on "60 Minutes" Sunday night -- "Osama given OK to nuke Yanks".
We were paying money for this kind of expert analysis? About 250 million people in the country could have told you the same thing about noon on 9/11/01. The fact that CBS thinks it's some sort of bombshell that bin Laden allegedly found a cleric to write him a permission slip to sneak a thermonuclear weapon into New York says a lot about how little the election has changed that show; but the fact that Scheuer thinks this is going to shock Americans into rethinking Bush's foreign policy says more about what passes for probing wisdom over at Langley right now.
Posted by: John at November 13, 2004 12:11 PMThere's expert analysis and there's hammering someone over the head. I see we have recognized the former Yugoslav republic Macedonia. Ironically, Macedonia is what Bush and Dr. Rice discussed Aug. 6, 2001.
Posted by: Wm D at November 13, 2004 12:27 PMYou would think that the media would have made more of Scheuer in the run up to the election. The problem is that he thinks we've been much to restrained, and ought to nuke them before they nuke us -- with them being the entire Arab world.
Hmm, how do we know that Harry isn't a senior CIA strategist?
Posted by: David Cohen at November 13, 2004 7:51 PM