• Central Intelligence Agency Central Intelligence Agency From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch – November 17, 2004 Americans might have expected that three years after 9/11 the nation’s intelligence agencies would have been reformed and redirected to combat terrorism. But they
• Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch – November 17, 2004
Americans might have expected that three years after 9/11 the nation’s intelligence agencies would have been reformed and redirected to combat terrorism. But they haven’t. Where there should be organization there is chaos.
While most of the country was paying attention to the resignations of Bush administration cabinet officials this week, some of the top career officials at the CIA have jumped overboard – some with a nudge from CIA chief Porter H. Goss.
Meanwhile, the reform of the intelligence agencies that grew out of the 9/11 commission’s report is stuck on Capitol Hill. The biggest impediment seems to be the Pentagon’s refusal to give up control of the purse strings of the intelligence budget.
Add to the confusion a note of intrigue. In the weeks before the presidential election, a number of CIA leaks seemed intended to embarrass President George W. Bush. No sooner had the president given an upbeat assessment of Iraq than a CIA assessment was leaked forecasting the possibility of civil war.
It appeared that the leakers wanted to help defeat the president partly to get Mr. Goss off their necks. Of course, the CIA’s clandestine activities shouldn’t include defeating a president for re-election. Now it’s payback time. Newsday reported last week that a former CIA official with White House connections said the White House ordered Mr. Goss “to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats.”
Just about everyone agrees that the CIA needs more spies. Currently, two-thirds of the covert agents are at Langley, Va., with only one-third overseas. Sensibly, Mr. Goss says he wants to reverse those proportions.
But the recent resignations of top administrators are less a reaction to Mr. Goss’s philosophy than to the GOP loyalists he brought from his congressional office. Stephen R. Kappes, deputy director of operations, and Michael J. Sulick, Mr. Kappes’ deputy, resigned on Monday. They reportedly quit after confrontations with Mr. Goss’s chief of staff, Patrick Murray.
Last Friday, the agency’s deputy director, John E. McLaughlin, announced his retirement, and the former executive director, A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard, was forced out after Mr. Goss’s arrival. Michael Scheuer, who had headed the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit, also quit last week. Mr. Scheuer was the anonymous author of “Imperial Hubris,” a best-seller that criticized Mr. Bush for redirecting intelligence from the effort to find bin Laden to the Iraqi war.
In Congress, the intelligence reform bills to create a national intelligence director are under assault by the Pentagon brass and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. They claim that the military won’t be able to obtain the battlefield intelligence if it can’t control the budget. But this seems like a smoke screen to disguise the Pentagon’s greedy attempt to keep control of the biggest portion of the intelligence budget.
It’s time for the president to tell Mr. Rumsfeld to get out of the way and to tell the House Republicans to go along with the Senate’s bill to rationalize the intelligence agencies to protect the American people.
