May 10 2006
The CIA’s Missed Opportunities
What is funny to see is the results of all the calls from Democrats and their liberal media buddies to follow the 9-11 commission recommendations and integrate our intelligence assets. I guess they thought that the integration would center around the failed CIA (which has a lot of good and heroic people in it, don’t get me wrong).
The spoils go to the victors. Able Danger demonstrated what new technology can do and it came out of the DoD. The CIA showed what the could do (or not do) with 9-11, the AQ Kahn nuclear secrets, India-Pakistan nukes, North Koreas nukes after signing a false deal with Clinton, etc, etc, etc. After all those failures, and in the light of serious successes by the military (who do you think owns those predators being used to track down Al Qaeda?) the die is cast. The CIA is going to be much different, and not astride the Intelligence Community. So I am not surprised and see positive potential when I read the hangwringing of the press:
THE resignation of Porter Goss after 18 months of trying to run the Central Intelligence Agency and the nomination of Gen. Michael Hayden to take his place make unmistakable something that actually occurred a year ago: the C.I.A., as it existed for 50 years, is gone.
Once the premier American intelligence organization, the agency has now been demoted to a combination action arm and support service for the rapidly growing Office of the Director of National Intelligence, headed by John Negroponte.
The C.I.A. used to coordinate, write and sign all “finished national intelligence” — no longer. The C.I.A.’s director used to lead the meetings of the heads of the numerous organizations that make up the “intelligence community” — no longer. The C.I.A. used to have final say on many aspects of intelligence “tasking” — no longer. Last to go was the role that made the agency pre-eminent, responsibility for briefing the president. Now that job belongs to Mr. Negroponte, with his $1 billion budget and staff of 1,500.
What really has the press upset is the CIA was their premier source for leaks. BTW, you will notice one thing not listed in the CIA’s demise, it’s sudden inability to keep the nation’s secrets safe. That too detroyed its chances. Watch how the NY Times tries to blame Bush for the CIA’s mistakes:
What finally humbled and gutted the C.I.A. after decades of Washington bureaucratic infighting was a loss of support where it counted most: the refusal of the Bush White House to accept responsibility for the two great “intelligence failures” that prompted Congress to reorganize our services.
The first failure laid at the feet of the agency was the inability to prevent the surprise attacks of 9/11. In fact, the C.I.A. (and others) warned the White House often during the first eight months of 2001 that an attack was coming and where it was coming from, but the Bush administration did nothing.
Yeah, but they did not say what form the attack would take. And that last bit of information is key. Bush’s team sent out warnings through the FAA. And of course, the 9-11 commission had a lot to say about the Gorelick Wall. In fact, it is the FISA rules and the Gorelick Wall that stopped the NSA or anyone from being able to warning law enforcement about strange activities in country because they were not deemed ‘pure sources’. But there’s more:
The second failure was the claim — “with high confidence” — in a National Intelligence Estimate sent by the C.I.A. to Congress in October 2002 that Iraq was making vigorous progress on programs for weapons of mass destruction.
Here they mean CIA Director George Tenet’s ‘Slam Dunk’. Of course none of this is the fault of the CIA! What a crock. The press corpse is losing their leakers and that is all this is about – their wallets. They never cared on bit about our nation’s security or they would never had traded our secrets in for Pulitzers and Nobels.
Our President plays a mean hardball!
There’s a funny line from Lyn Nofziger. Who was asked by GOPsers who were backing Reagan in 1976 (when he didn’t win the nomination from Ford), just how they should behave at the Convention.
It goes like this:
Nofziger is asked “What should be our demeanor?”
And, his response was “Da meaner da better.”
Who said our President was a lightweight when it came to politics doesn’t know a thing about politics or how you really play ball!
What is Bush doing? Like Lincoln, he’s putting changes into place that will be with us way up ahead. And, it does end the slave encampments set up by the donks. And, their fellow communist bed wetters.
Like the way our military has changed, into Special Ops operations, instead of “boots on the ground,” our intelligence community won’t be ONE THING. But many different operations. All with goals that put America FIRST.
Yup. You’re right that it changes how the CIA did operate; gaining its toe hold in schmear jobs. With the help of the MSM.
Now all they’ve got is Fitzgerald. And, I’m not sure he’s bringing them gifts that will produce much for the CIA and the Plame Gamers. Not a pity. The whole thing was cooked up in frawnce, anyway. As if the MSM could produce this fake and get it passed off as the real deal.
Does it matter? Will Dan Rather get company at the bottom of the barrel? The real story is in a million puzzle pieces. Which gives everyone hours of entertainment connecting the dots.
AJ,
Love your analysis.
There’s an interview I came across a while ago at The Morning News from 2004 titled Birnbaum vs. McCarry. The interviewer is talking with a former CIA agent turned author named Charles McCarry. Here’s the exchange that really was surprising:
McCarry: …I never met a stupid person in the agency, or an assassin, or a Republican.
Q: No republicans [laughs], are you serious?
McCarry: I’m serious…at least in the operations side where I was, we were wall-to-wall kneejerk liberals. And they were befuddled that the left outside the agency regarded them as some sort of right-wing threat. Because they were the absolute opposite.
Believe me, I was stunned when I read that 2 years ago. Now it just further fills in the picture of how openly partisan the CIA liberals feel they can be. However, I think Walter Pincus et al figured this out years and decades ago.
Not directly related, but been looking around again today at something that makes ya go hmmm
There are some strange goings on with the sudden appearance of Sestak v Weldon
A couple of dem candidates suddenly decided that had no intrest in continuing…ah armtwisting here
Sestak’s spokesperson, Allison Price, is Director of Communications at Sandy Berger’s DC Consulting and Lobbying Firm
Then you look at the contributions to a novice politician
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1618849/posts
The list reads like a whose who of all the usual suspects
Some money is betting that they wan’t to quash any more runups on able danger, since if it gets traction then the parallel project they were running on chinagate and what it turned up might get a little press
Somehow I find it just a little more than accidental that all the usual suspects seem to always flock together. I mean they have been out of the Whitehouse for a while and one would assume they would have normally traveled different paths.
And oh by the way Sestak also served on the NSC….geee what a shock
Another thing that bothers me about Sestak he was pulled up by a Clinton appointee Vern Clark.. he jumped over many more senior officers to the second position just under the Chief of Naval Operations.
Sort of a bit like the miraculous advance of Ms McCarthy. I mean this guy was only stationed on destroyer escorts and other “small boys” as the navy calls them…not any where near the usual career path that would have warranted such an advancement jump over others.
The CIA needs more deep cleaning than it could get in 18 months. One would hope that the “culture” of the CIA could be changed. These were chin scratchers from many ivy league schools. I recall one who was a music major and I was told music majors do well at the CIA because they are “disciplined.” But in fact, I was told by another that the place was rife with nepotism.
A military guy may be just what is needed to try to wring something good out of the place, before the EPA declares it a toxic waste site.
Despite A.J.’s writings about immigration, I am really mad at BUSH and the Congressional GOP. I think Weldon may be the only GOP I could give money to.
JForrik, re, “No Republicans:”
That is probably institutionalized, and goes back to OSS-to-CIA origins, and Donovan’s selection to head up the fledgling Agency. It was J. Edgar Hoover’s fear, partially because Donovan and the former WWII intelligence officers had developed working relationships and comraderie with their Soviet counterparts, that communist infiltration was a real threat.
In any event, many of the spate of ‘authorized biographies’ of the 1970s (post-Nixon and Church Committee image cleansing) allude to the leftist bent of most of their colleagues (of course, that could be a simple literary/psychological device to create distance from Nixon).
It’s likely, according to the author (I think it was Jim Hougan ? a former editor of Harper’s if memory sans Ginko Biloba serves), of “Spooks,” also late-1970s I think, that Hoover slipped one of his loyalists, Robert Maheu, into the new agency to keep Hoover aware of potential infiltration.
Also, a great deal of CIA recruiting activity concentrates on major college/university students; from the 1960s on, most of these are breeding grounds of liberalism.
AJ–
You point out that the media are handwringing because Goss is going.
Well, when Goss drove out Stephen Kappes the right smeared him as a leftist leaker. IT was all lies. Congressman Weldon trashed him the most, even tho’ Kappes couldn’t argue back because of his position as the head of the Directorate of Operations.
The MSM seemed to like Kappes and not Goss. It is strange, because now they are wringing their hands about Goss leaving.
Now HAyden the NSA the guy tapped to be CIA head is bringing back Kappes as the #2.
Kappes quit because Goss’s deputy, Murray, (who had been a Republican operative of Goss’s) tried to make Kappes leak information embarrassing to the democrats.
Kappes was loyal to the President, but he was forced out because he refused to do a partisan leak that Goss’s Murray had ordered.We don’t like CIA leaks, period, right? Not from the left or right.
I have good reason to say that Kappes was no leftist as some on the right claim who smeared him.
So now the NSA guy Hayden will head the CIA and Kappes it seems will be his #2.
Here it is in Kappes hometown paper
http://www.athensnews.com/issue/article.php3?story_id=24394
I don’t think you have it all figured out AJ.
Now you are going to see the CIA turn into real spies. Kappes is the best.
But just google Kappes at “news”
Or go to http://www.freerepublic.com and do a search for Kappes. They trashed him, too. These stupid so-called “conservative” know-nothings.
Weldon did a real attack-job on him because Kappes told Weldon to stop playing James Bond.
So you like Hayden. Well, Kappes is who he picked.