Thimbles worth of opinion
Symetrically challenged
Registered: Aug 2000
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Keeping an eye on the CIA
Alot of interesting things going on within the CIA and ex-CIA community as of late, thought it might be a good time to have a thread to discuss them.
Here's an interesting article from TIME magazine.
http://www.politrix.org/modules.php...rticle&sid=1545
quote:
Within days of Goss's arrival, a number of top CIA officials began to contemplate retirement, including acting Director John McLaughlin and Executive Director A.B. Krongard. Then, last week, came the abrupt departures of D.O. chief Stephen Kappes and his deputy, Michael Sulick, two pragmatic and tough-minded officers who were regarded almost universally as mission oriented, apolitical and aggressive — exactly the traits Goss was supposedly looking for. Kappes, who had served as station chief in Moscow and the Middle East, was best known at Langley for helping persuade Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to forswear terrorism and give up his rudimentary WMD program. Kappes, who made multiple trips to Tripoli to seal the deal, was one of the few CIA officers who won high marks from both Republican and Democratic members of the 9/11 commission. Sulick is another former Moscow station chief who, in the words of an ex-spy, "has a New Yorker's quick wit and cynical outlook on life. He'd more likely skewer both sides" than favor one political party over another, the officer says.
What's most unsettling about the resignations is that they seem to have grown out of petty disagreements that could easily have been avoided. The first began with a tempest over a longtime Goss aide, Michael Kostiw, whom Goss intended to name as the agency's executive director, but who lost the job after it was revealed he had left the CIA 20 years earlier when he was arrested for allegedly shoplifting a pound of bacon. (The charges were dropped after he agreed to resign.) Although CIA insiders argue that reporters could have been tipped off by a CIA alumnus who remembered Kostiw's undistinguished departure, Goss aides feared that officials in the agency leaked the bacon caper to the press to embarrass Goss upon his arrival at Langley, former officials say.
Then, on Nov. 5, Kappes and his deputy, Sulick, complained in a meeting with Goss and Patrick Murray, Goss's chief of staff, about Murray's pointed critique of a Sulick memo laying out a proposed D.O. outreach program for members of Congress. Twice in that session, Sulick tossed pieces of paper at Murray. After Goss left for another meeting, Sulick, who is in his 50s and is a Vietnam vet, told Murray, who is 40, that he wasn't going to be treated like some "f___ing Democratic Hill puke," says a CIA source. Disturbed by the episode, Murray asked Kappes a few days later to reassign Sulick. Kappes refused, and the two took their dispute to Goss, who told both men to work things out. The matter festered over a weekend, and when Kappes came to work on Monday, he told Goss he and Sulick would be resigning. Goss tried to persuade Kappes to stay on, says a CIA source, but both men quit anyway. Sulick could not be reached for response. Kappes declined to comment.
The impact of those departures was just crashing over Washington's sizable spook community when Goss sent an e-mail to the staff listing what he called "the rules of the road." Wrote Goss: "We support the Administration and its policies in our work. As Agency employees we do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the Administration or its policies. We provide the intelligence as we see it — and let the facts alone speak to the policymaker." The email was probably more clumsy than insidious, but when coupled with the departures of two senior officials, many CIA insiders saw it as a loyalty test, a warning by Goss to tailor the intelligence to fit the policies or risk decapitation. "A number of people at the agency view the changes Goss is putting in place as an attempt to bring them to heel rather than an effort to make reforms everyone agrees are necessary," says Whitley Bruner, a former D.O. officer who worked in the Middle East.
The Bush administration takes credit for disarming Libya as a threat, but the hatchet man's chief of staff pisses on the agent most involved with Libyan negociations and causes him to retire. Having an appointed know-thing say things like their department is becoming "nothing more than a stilted bureaucracy incapable of even the slightest bit of success. The nimble, flexible, core mission-oriented enterprise that D.O. once was is becoming just a fleeting memory" doesn't help either.
One of the thing that makes Goss upset is leaks. Like the one that forced Michael Kostiw to retire (a pound of bacon is expensive, it cost one his job and an appointment).
But only particular kinds of leaks, mind you. like the ones on blue dresses, not the ones of covert cia agents. These kinds of things are creating friction.
Most other links to this story are stating things in the same vein.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS...a.resignations/
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/...signations.html
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/ne...ts/10189682.htm
quote:
"Porter Goss is on the right track," McCain said Sunday, also on CBS. McCain said the kind of personnel changes that have been reported as causing dissent within the CIA ranks are absolutely necessary. "He is being savaged by these people that want the status quo, and the status quo is not satisfactory."
To others, Goss' aides are employing a brusque management style that is alienating career officials with decades of experience.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washin...ignations_x.htm
quote:
Beneath the formalities lay a simmering dispute pitting Kappes and Sulick against Goss and his top aide, Patrick Murray. Under Goss' chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee earlier this year, Murray drafted a report calling the Directorate of Operations "dysfunctional." Rep. Jane Harman of California, ranking Democrat on the panel, said Monday that Murray was part of a "highly partisan, inexperienced staff" that Goss brought from Capitol Hill. Harman said Goss' staff clashed with CIA officers she described as highly professional. Murray, through a CIA spokesman, declined to comment.
At any rate more cia stuff here:
Dogmatic intelligence
A veteran CIA operative sues the agency for firing him after he refused orders to falsify his reports on Iraq's WMD.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2...suit/index.html
U.S. Insiders Say Iraq Intel Deliberately Skewed
by Jim Wolf
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0531-01.htm
How to Create a WIA -- Worthless Intelligence Agency
By Chalmers Johnson (author of Blowback)
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2025
Selective Intelligence
Donald Rumsfeld Has His Own Special Sources. Are They Reliable?
(about the Cabal (Team B 2000))
by Seymour M. Hersh
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0506-06.htm
I feel that there's a danger of inverting the mission of the CIA. Instead of assertianing information and reacting to it, in a way that the public often doesn't know about, it's new mission will be to provide the information to justify a predecided action, as an excercise for the public.
Which brings us to:
Intelligence Reform or Patriot Act 2?
http://www.zmag.org/content/showart...=43&ItemID=6848
quote:
Intelligence reform has been a stealth-project from the get-go. It was intended to shift the blame for 9-11 and the Iraq war (WMD) to the Intel organizations (primarily the CIA). It’s complete nonsense. Everyone knows the problems stemmed from the falsifying of information by the Bush team, so there was no reason to go through all the hoopla of “fixing” the system.
Instead of addressing the underlying issues, the new bill eviscerates what’s left of the Bill of Rights and hands over more power to Bush. Now, Bush is free to hand-pick the men he wants for top-level Intelligence positions without Senate confirmation - an invitation to create his personal security apparatus without congressional interference. The bill also decreases Congress’ powers of oversight. The new Intelligence Director can exempt his office from “audits and investigations, and Congress will not receive reports from an objective internal auditor.” In other words, Congress has limited its own access to critical information of how taxpayer dollars are being spent. They’ve simply given up their role of checking for presidential abuse.
The bill “eliminates provisions to ensure that it (Congress) receives timely access to intelligence, and it also allows the White House's Office of Management and Budget to screen testimony before the Intelligence Director presents it to the Congress.” So, now Bush can either stonewall Congress entirely or just cherry-pick the tidbits he doesn’t mind handing over. The Congress is just paving the way for even greater secrecy.
Needless to say, all the whistle-blower protections have been removed from the new bill. In this new paradigm of Mafia-style governance the only unpardonable offense is reporting the crimes of one’s bosses. Now, the Bush Fedayeen can purge the entire intelligence apparatus and no one will be the wiser.
Also, the Intelligence budget (around$20 billion) will be shielded from Congressional scrutiny. Can you believe it? The Congress is cutting a blank check for $20 billion to Bush and they don’t want to know what he’s doing with the money?!? There’s no doubt that copious amounts of cash will be dumped into illicit activity, like dirty tricks, covert operations, torture facilities and death squads.
ACLU Disappointed With ‘Intelligence Reform’ Bill Passage, Final Measure Still Contains Unneeded Attacks on Privacy and Freedom
http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/Saf...?ID=17168&c=206
quote:
the intelligence reform bill unnecessarily expands upon law enforcement powers - several of which were seen in the draft Patriot Act 2 - a measure so controversial, it was never considered by Congress. Specifically, it unnecessarily expands wiretapping to erase a key constitutional safeguard and expands the "guilt by association" material support law, including making mere membership in a designated terrorist organization a criminal offense for the first time. It should be remembered that the 9/11 Commission did not call for any of these provisions in its report.
http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/Saf...?ID=17155&c=206
quote:
n letters sent to the House and Senate today, the ACLU said that the legislation contains provisions that would:
* Unnecessarily expand wiretapping to erase a key constitutional safeguard and expand the "guilt by association" material support law, including making mere membership in a designated terrorist organization a criminal offense for the first time. The 9/11 Commission did not call for any of these provisions in its report.
* Create a weakened civil liberties board that risks becoming the proverbial fox guarding the hen house. The board would be appointed by the President, serve at his pleasure, and have no subpoena power.
* Standardize drivers’ licenses and state identification cards, creating a de facto national ID. This cosmetic "quick fix" would not effectively deter terrorists, the ACLU said, but would threaten our freedom and our right to privacy by making it easier for the federal government to constantly track our movements.
The ACLU did, however, applaud the conference committee for resisting attempts by a few hard-line Members of Congress to insert assaults on immigrants’ rights and grant law enforcement sweeping new powers.
"While the bill could have been much worse, Congress should not pass a bad bill simply because it is there," said Timothy H. Edgar, an ACLU Legislative Counsel. "Politics - not policy - has been the main driving force behind this bill. Politics should not be allowed to determine the shape of our national intelligence systems."
So what chu all think of the the goings on in intelligence, intelligence reform, the cia, and all? Happy reading.
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12-13-2004 05:16 AM
