Can you just imagine how the White House feels? First the CIA gives you the bum information that leaves you hung out to dry with the cries of "liar, liar, pants on fire!" from the opposition, then this same CIA actively works against you and for the opposition candidate!
Can you imagine how the CIA feels? You warn the administration that the DOD intel people, directed by amateurs, are feeding them questionable information from self-interested sources. They ignore you, and listen to the people who tell them what they want to hear. When it turns out that you were right, they turn around and blame you, because they want to protect their buddies. You have public exposes of laughable uncoordinated operations run by think-tank academics on their own, with strong suggestions of approval from above (I’m told the Ledeen/Ghorbanifar farce is only the tip of that particular iceberg).
Political activity by CIA personnel is unacceptable, and anyone who stepped over that line is going to have to go. I can understand the frustration, though. It’s unfortunate, to say the least, that the intelligence community is being chopped up at a time when unity of purpose is so badly needed.
It’s become fashionable, in neocon circles at least, to dismiss State and CIA as useless obstructionists, but the actual picture is a good deal more complicated than that. One might consider that if not for the stand put up by CIA and State, the Neocon think-tank ideologues would have cheerfully installed an Iranian agent with zero popular following in Iraq as the head of a provisional Iraqi government. At least we avoided that particular disaster. |
