NYT: Spy vs Spy (a must-read, can't summarize this on one line!)

[BlueEyedSon]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/10/opinion/10powers.html

What finally humbled and gutted the C.I.A. after decades of Washington bureaucratic infighting was a loss of support where it counted most: the refusal of the Bush White House to accept responsibility for the two great "intelligence failures" that prompted Congress to reorganize our services.

The first failure laid at the feet of the agency was the inability to prevent the surprise attacks of 9/11. In fact, the C.I.A. (and others) warned the White House often during the first eight months of 2001 that an attack was coming and where it was coming from, but the Bush administration did nothing. For reasons of broad national psychology, the White House's failure to stir itself was simultaneously overlooked and forgiven by the public, while the C.I.A. (and others) got held to strict account for failing to predict the day and the hour.

The second failure was the claim — "with high confidence" — in a National Intelligence Estimate sent by the C.I.A. to Congress in October 2002 that Iraq was making vigorous progress on programs for weapons of mass destruction. But this finding was in effect dragged out of the agency by the White House and the Pentagon. Agency analysts working on the issue assumed that Saddam Hussein was up to something, but they knew their evidence was thin and ambiguous; many of their superiors knew about contrary evidence but suppressed it.

Everybody at the C.I.A. — from George Tenet, then the director, down — knew the agency could not tell United Nations weapons inspectors where to find anything over a period of months. The C.I.A. knew it didn't know what sort of weapons program Iraq really had, and absent White House pressure the analysts would have written an intelligence estimate reflecting their uncertainties. (It is worth noting that the Senate Intelligence Committee, despite a promise to do so, has been conspicuously reluctant to examine the source of the pressure for the drumbeat of alarming weapons intelligence, or how the White House made use of it.)

[Turbineguy]

1. Another Bush legacy

that will take many years to work out.

[BlueEyedSon]

2. kick

[BlueEyedSon]

3. kick

[Captain Hilts]

4. Admin capitalized on public ignorance about CIA to blame them. nt

[Brotherjohn]

5. Hopefully, the Dem prez in 2009 will: Eliminate the DNI, return the CIA...

... to its role as the pre-eminent national intelligence agency (there was no need for a chief intelligence office, that was the CIA), eliminate the Dept. of Homeland Security, and return the roles to the individual agencies (a post-Katrina investigation showed these agencies should be given a stronger role in responding to disasters, you know, the same role they USED to have!).

... and while we're at it, this new president should investigate the White House's use of intelligence leading up to Iraq and their responsibility in the 9/11 intel failure.

Hey, I could DREAM!

Seriously, intelligence should not be political. Not only has this WH always behaved as if it were, but with the DNI, they have institutionalized this belief. The consequences could doom the U.S.

[Uncle Joe]

6. This is how the neocons remake the government in their own image.

They take an agency doing a relatively good job and break it through their own incompetence/corruption, let the agency take the blame, then neuter it and separate it from ultimate "decider" with an additional layer of bureaucracy so that he cannot be held accountable for any future failures. This increases his ability to use plausible deni-ability as an excuse for his failures and further separates the American People from their own "elected" government.

They did the same thing with FEMA, which was praised for their performance during the 2000 debate by Gore and Bush. The neocons believe our government is Pottery Barn and they can break any pot they want because ultimately they did not want that pot anyway.