November 15, 2004

Anybody seen Beria?

Is the United States about to acquire its own equivalent of the East German Stasi or the pre-revolution Savak? When the new Director hires four former aides, many of whom are said to be highly partisan, and then refuses to talk to prior Directors, one wonders. Particularly when the Deputy Director resigns in dismay, and when several other senior officers are thinking of doing the same. Of course, if I were a senior officer and I got an edict like this:

"The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda."
I might be looking for other work as well.

Has truth-telling become less important than loyalty? What's next, star chambers? Oh,wait...we've been trying those in Guantanamo.

If your Congressperson or Senator is on either of the Intelligence Committees, maybe you should drop them a line if you think this behavior shouldn't be condoned.

Update: Josh Marshall has some thoughts about the professionals being tossed out by the political appointees. He notes that it's the latter who have invariably been wrong in their judgments throughout the past four years, and views this with even more alarm than do I.

Posted by Linkmeister at November 15, 2004 12:01 AM
Comments

I was thinking of the CIA yesterday, after reading so many reports of the shake-up there.

If the purge is to replace indepedent thinkers with Administration supporters, then we will all suffer.

On the other hand, I think the pre-election leaks that emanated from dissaffected CIA apparatchiks were deeply troubling.

If leaking for partisan effect becomes endemic, it would breed a culture where those at the CIA feel that they are above the law, master-puppeteers influencing policy outside of their chain-of-command. This year, they would sabotage a Republican Administration, but four years from now they would might have little compunction against working against a Democratic Administration that dared to have policies at variance with the puppet-masters.

Best to stay completely apolitical.

The leakers have to go.

Posted by: Pixxelshim at November 16, 2004 05:02 AM

Who's to say those leaks were politically-inspired or patriotic? Without asking the leakers, will we ever know?

Posted by: Linkmeister at November 16, 2004 04:36 PM

As Porter Goss emailed employees at the Agency on Monday, "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."

Posted by: Pixxelshim at November 17, 2004 02:46 AM

I can agree with the second half of that statement. I would say that the job is to collect all intelligence, and emphatically not to push those parts of it which go against the Administration under a rug.

Posted by: Linkmeister at November 17, 2004 07:54 AM

Thank God (I'm NOT being facetious now) we really do NOT have looming immediate existential threats out there. The fact is, A.Q. is pretty disorganized (vis a vis attacking North America, anyway), and got luckyin their one-off in 2001. While nuclear proliferation will almost certainly put atomic bombs and the means to land them on American soil in the hands of Iran, North Korea, probably Nigeria, and quite possibly Brazil, South Korea and a number of other countries we don't even think about, by the end of the Bush II second term, the reality is that these are still pretty lame threats compared to hundreds of MIRVed Soviet ICBMs aimed at us.

It's really a race as to whether or not anyone (or everyone else, acting in concert) can emerge as a big enough threat to us in the next four years. If they CAN, we will be flying as blind as we have been with respect to Iraq... which isn't good...

God knows, given the policy prerogatives at CIA, it's not like we'll know if they do anyway.

Thus far, we've often been incredibly lucky as a nation. We seem to be counting on that.

Posted by: the talking dog at November 17, 2004 10:30 AM