Head of US Intell Agency Forced To Step Down After Angering Rummy

[kpete]

Agency head to leave after reported Rumsfeld clash Fri Jan 6, 4:22 PM ET



WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The head of the U.S. intelligence agency that analyzes data from military spy satellites and U2 aircraft will leave his post in June, officials said on Friday.

James Clapper, a retired Air Force general, will step down as director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency on June 13, three months short of his fifth anniversary as head of the defense department operation, officials said.

The Baltimore Sun, which first reported Clapper's departure, said the NGA director was being forced out after angering Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on an issue involving intelligence reform.


The Sun quoted an unnamed former official as saying that Clapper earned Rumsfeld's ire in 2004 by telling Congress his agency would not be ill-served by the creation of a director of national intelligence, or DNI, a post created by post-September 11 reforms that was initially opposed by Pentagon officials.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060106/ts_nm/security_clapper_dc

[SmokingJacket]

1. Hmm, I wonder if he was given shut-up money...

or if he'll squawk.

[Flabbergasted]

2. Yeah wondering what the intelligence reform issue is??

[Peace Patriot]

3. Another honest, competent professional out the door, to be replaced by

toadies and yes-men. That's what it sounds like to me.

Personally, I think Rumsfeld is the most dangerous of our homegrown "Axis of Evil" (Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld). I call him "the Lurker"--the only one whose name hasn't come up (that I know of) in Treasongate, although I think it is one of his projects that was behind the whole thing (a scheme to plant WMDs in Iraq, after the invasion, possibly to be "found" by Judith Miller); the Lurker, who drew all NORAD decision powers into his own hands three months prior to 9/11, and then was AWOL during the critical hour, after the WTC was hit, during which our nation's capitol had no air cover, and the standard AF/NORAD procedures for that circumstance--an off-course aircraft headed for DC--were not implemented.

Of the three, I think Rumsfeld is also the most insane. The incident described in the OP doesn't surprise me. The terrible impacts of this junta's suppression of healthy dissent are most evident in the agencies/forces that he in charge of--the military, and military intel.