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| Home Front: Politix |
| The CIA's Insurgency: The agency's political disinformation campaign. |
| 2004-09-29 |
| Congratulations to Porter Goss for being confirmed last week as the new Director of Central Intelligence. We hope he appreciates that he now has two insurgencies to defeat: the one that the CIA is struggling to help put down in Iraq, and the other inside Langley against the Bush Administration. We wish we were exaggerating. It's become obvious over the past couple of years that large swaths of the CIA oppose U.S. anti-terror policy, especially toward Iraq. But rather than keep this dispute in-house, the dissenters have taken their objections to the public, albeit usually through calculated and anonymous leaks that are always spun to make the agency look good and the Bush Administration look bad. Their latest improvised explosive political device blew up yesterday on the front page of the New York Times, in a story proclaiming that the agency had warned back in January 2003 of a possible insurgency in Iraq. This highly selective leak (more on that below) was conveniently timed for two days before the first Presidential debate. |
| Posted by:Mrs. Davis |
| #23 I wouldn't have advised a major CIA/FBI shake-up immediately after 9-11. With repsect to 9-11 much of the information was actually in the system, the signal to noise ratio was way too low though. The intelligence system seems to have been more exposed by the Iraq war although some of the negativity surrounding the Iraq invasion disappears if you assume that the WMD exist and just were shipped to Syria. The house-cleaning is proceeding at a prudent pace. The accountability comparison for a ship CO is sort of a stretch, because there is a system of training and relieving CO's in place. The shake-up in the intelligence community won't happen through firings it will happen though retirements. With the shake-up will come new plum assignments that will provide the opportunity to pass-over the Richard Clarks of the intelligence world. They will then retire and commence engagement in overt treachery possibly drawing pay from CFR or maybe the Ford Foundation. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2004-09-29 10:28:08 PM |
| #22 Field Ops? Growing better - then again they were left to deteriorate to pure shite during the middle Clinton years. Folks, it takes a 5-6 years of hard work to set up field ops, and a decade until you get full and reliable intelligence flowing from them. Do the math - we suck right now overall, with some spats that are still very very good, and other ones that are just getting on their feet again. Plus there are a lot of holdovers from middle management that moved up under Clinton, and whoa re now leaking and spinning like mad, because if they can shove blame onto Bush, the not only get a Republican in trouble (and that tells you they woudl sell the nation for political gain), they also cover their own asses for theer failures prior to 9/11. As much as I hate to admit it, there are a lot of the desk-bound paper pushers who don't deserve to even lick the boots of the field guys they screw over. And weedin them out will be very hard. Someone needs to go through the whole intelligence community with a flamethrower - but be sure to have a fire extinguisher for the areas they hit with splashover. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2004-09-29 9:56:44 PM |
| #21 what's your assessment of our field ops capability right now in the middle east beyond Iraq? |
| Posted by: lex 2004-09-29 2:43:54 PM |
| #20 Only thoughts. Sincerely doubt Bush 41 had anything to do with it. And Rumsfeld didn't do any sort of wholesale firings at DoD, not an accurate comparison. First thought is that Bush might be too loyal to failing subordinates, like Bush 41. Not likely. Second thought is that the attacks weren't the results of an intel failure, and he sensed that from the beginning--the system needed readjustment, not reconstruction. But while there may have been little to punish, failure to fire left the wrong people (the ones with no imaginations) in charge of the intel he needs to win the GWOT. Perhaps I'm not objective, but it has always seemed to me that if the law enforcement and immigration enforcement elements had done their jobs, 9-11 couldn't have happened. For example, after John Walker was exposed, the Navy automatically removed every single CMS (crypto) manager from his job and installed new ones, assuming the entire system was broke. If junior seaman Smith makes a mistake that results in damage to his ship, such as running aground or a maintenance casualty, the CO gets relieved because he's ultimately responsible. To the extent that our national law enforcement and intelligence agencies failed to deter and detect al Qaeda's plans, the bosses should have been fired. Every investigation since then has confirmed that the top tiers of the agencies are little more than petrified wood. If we speak of immigration failures, we have to roll State into this as well, and they well deserve a big chunk of the blame. |
| Posted by: longtime lurker 2004-09-29 2:28:13 PM |
| #19 LL, any thoughts as to why Bush did not do so? He was certainly willing to let Rummy kick ass and take names at DoD. Did Poppy interfere? |
| Posted by: lex 2004-09-29 1:48:23 PM |
| #18 I like Gerecht, but he's not as current as he'd like to think he is... However, as RN pointed out, the days of one operative handling the same cases for years and years is long gone, if it ever was. Turnover of agents handling cases is as regular and scheduled as are, say, military assignments. I've always regretted that Bush didn't sack the top three to five echelons of the CIA and the FBI in the days following 9-11. He would have immensely improved the product and service, and he would have had popular support to do it. He could have stiff-armed the lawsuits with urgent national security considerations, and would have done more to protect the USA than all the commissions will ever do. |
| Posted by: longtime lurker 2004-09-29 1:31:42 PM |
| #17 To hell with reshuffling the senior people. Identify the problem people and remove them. Reshuffling means they'd still be there dragging everybody else down with their inbred habits, while removal and replacement puts in new blood and a better chance for new thinking into the organization. |
| Posted by: Bomb-a-rama 2004-09-29 12:24:30 PM |
| #16 Mr Goss has to send some boys to do some reconnissance along the Alaska border with the Yukon to seek out Jihadist Canadian Caribou. Then maybe they would chill out... |
| Posted by: BigEd 2004-09-29 11:46:36 AM |
| #15 LH - acc to Reuel Marc Gerecht, we do not have any valuable field ops in the middle east. In his words, the CIA is "flying blind" there. Given the very serious risk that one or more of Joe Wilson's many CIA confreres will, in his anti-Bush mania, go over to the other side, I think it's time to seriously weigh the costs and benefits of shutting it down and starting fresh. |
| Posted by: lex 2004-09-29 11:40:17 AM |
| #14 During the 70’s President Carter pretty much gutted the CIA and US Army capability to operate informant strings both in foreign and domestic settings. The Clinton group put an additional speed bump in place when they restricted contact with informants/spies that may have had criminal connections. Putting an accurate operative in place is a long process of vetting and establishing, if not mutual trust, then at least respect. Once the string is broken, it’s difficult to reestablish with any guarantee it’s not been turned, or co-opted. I’m reminded of a young Pakistani SSG Captain I met in the late 60’s in Rawlapindi…his name was something like Moosraf, or Mursharraf or something. Ya neva know where individuals you meet early in your career will end up. Then of course, if there’s no continuity over the years, it really doesn’t matter…to our detriment. |
| Posted by: RN 2004-09-29 11:35:03 AM |
| #13 Im not privy to such things, lex - thats one of the things Porter Goss has to go through in detail - clean out the incompetent or marginally loyal, while maintaining as much continuity as possible. But first he has to deal with the more senior folks, like Pillar. But I doubt very much that the network in the ME is totally valueless. |
| Posted by: Liberalhawk 2004-09-29 11:12:44 AM |
| #12 Do we even have field ops worth anything in the middle east today? |
| Posted by: lex 2004-09-29 11:05:05 AM |
| #11 unfortunately you cant shut an intel agency down and start over. You got agents (NOT operatives) IE foreigners in place around the world who are used to working with some local CIA operative. There are central files on who the agents are, but the field op knows the people, what makes them tick, etc. You take away a field op and you lose continuity with the agents, and you may lose some agents. You take away ALL the existing field ops, and the whole frigging organization behind them, and you'll have a major disaster. Old spook, others, care to comment? The key, as the Op Jour points out, is to remove/reshuffle the senior people. Expect CIA to take it as happily as DoD has taken Rummy - IE not very. |
| Posted by: Liberalhawk 2004-09-29 11:00:40 AM |
| #10 .com, I'm speaking of citizens. Born and bred Americans whose parents or grandparents came here fleeing f**ed up authoritarian or socialist regimes. The best analogy here is to Irish Catholic Americans, who in an earlier era were also suspected of foreign loyalties. During the twentieth century, most Irish Catholics became super-patriotic-- or "more American than the Americans," as it was said of Jack and Bobby Kennedy-- and distinguished themselves in the military and then later in the security agencies. I suspect the same could be said of Mexican-Americans today. From the asian-american high achievers I know, I see no reason why the same would not apply to them and their children. They tend to be more capitalist and pro-American, or at least inoculated against idiotarian leftism, than their elite peers at Yale or MIT. |
| Posted by: lex 2004-09-29 10:49:15 AM |
| #9 Give 'em a couple of years to develop a nest egg and appreciation for the way America really works to their benefit and then approach them from the top of their organization with an offer they won't refuse. Isn't that how WBD did it? |
| Posted by: Mrs. Davis 2004-09-29 10:34:41 AM |
| #8 "And many of those grads received massive US Govt subsidies - unavailable to citizens. Of course, the downside is they are fresh from the indoctrination center, so..." On the other hand, there are/going to be a lot of "Iraq graduates" who are, right now. (a) Being tested re. ability & dedication. (b) Gaining a good insight into the differences (which cannot be overemphasized) between the Western and the Islamic fundamental world views. |
| Posted by: Anonymous6092 2004-09-29 10:34:16 AM |
| #7 And many of those grads received massive US Govt subsidies - unavailable to citizens. Of course, the downside is they are fresh from the indoctrination center, so... |
| Posted by: .com 2004-09-29 10:25:07 AM |
| #6 Sounds good. Another thought: we have many thousands of brilliant young asian-americans of Indian, Pakistani, Chinese and Korean descent leaving elite US universities each year and heading to Wall Street or Silicon Valley, where they are now as numerous as non-asians. Isn't it about time we started to get rid of State and CIA's decadent, corrupt old WASPy Arabists and start recruiting patriotic young asian-american high achievers? |
| Posted by: lex 2004-09-29 10:21:02 AM |
| #5 And the FBI and DIA and... |
| Posted by: .com 2004-09-29 10:18:12 AM |
| #4 Can we clean out State while we're at it? |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2004-09-29 10:13:49 AM |
| #3 The CIA's broken. Shut it down and start over. |
| Posted by: lex 2004-09-29 10:09:31 AM |
| #2 sounds like a house-cleaning of incompetent political fuckwits is in order. It's not like the CIA has a good track record in the last decade.... |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-09-29 10:03:19 AM |
| #1 Bill Casey: Where are you when we need you? |
| Posted by: badanov 2004-09-29 9:44:57 AM |