IF ONLY HE REALLY WERE AN AGENT OF CHANGE...:

Abuse Issue Puts the C.I.A. and Justice Dept. at Odds (Peter Baker, David Johnston and Mark Mazzetti, 8/28/09, NY Times)

With the appointment of a prosecutor to investigate detainee abuses, long-simmering conflicts between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department burst into plain view this week, threatening relations between two critical players on President Obama’s national security team.

The tension between the agencies complicates how the administration handles delicate national security issues, particularly the tracking and capturing of suspected terrorists overseas. It also may distract Mr. Obama, who is trying to move beyond the battles of the Bush years to focus on an ambitious domestic agenda, most notably health care legislation. [...]

Despite the C.I.A. pressure and the stated desire of the White House not to dwell on the past, Mr. Holder went ahead with an investigation that will determine whether agents broke the law in their brutal interrogations.

The officials interviewed for this article spoke anonymously so that they could discuss debates over classified matters.

On the day the decision was announced, Mr. Panetta phoned Mr. Holder, according to people familiar with the call. In the conversation, which lasted less than a minute, the C.I.A. director told the attorney general that the agency would cooperate but expressed his displeasure and swore mildly, if only once.

Mr. Holder and Mr. Panetta are each confronting difficult balancing acts. Mr. Holder inherited a dispirited department accused of carrying out the political wishes of the Bush White House, and he now must show independence while continuing to work with the rest of the administration.

For his part, Mr. Panetta, who is also new to his job and lacks a background in intelligence, must carry out White House orders to make a clean break with some of the Bush administration’s intelligence policies, including ending the C.I.A.’s harsh interrogations. At the same time he must soothe frayed nerves at the C.I.A.

...Mr. Obama would do what should have been done years ago: shut the place, raze it, salt the earth and switch to a market-based open intelligence system. Instead, typically, he's giving us the worst of all possible worlds: the same useless, when not actually counterproductive, agency further crippled by leftwing politics.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 28, 2009 7:34 AM