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Author Topic:   Heads roll at the CIA
LibraSparkle
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posted November 20, 2004 03:04 PM           Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote

Article Published: Saturday, November 20, 2004 - 2:15:17 AM EST

Heads roll at the CIA

The failures of the Central Intelligence Agency in the 21st century have been conspicuous and costly. Its big picture failure to see the 9/11 attacks coming, and its smaller failures to perceive what was really going on inside Iraq, cannot be completely blamed upon the Bush administration. The appointment of a hard-nosed new director to knock some heads together is just what the doctor ordered.
But the way the "purge" is being conducted by former Florida congressman Porter Goss, with the emphasis on loyalty to President Bush rather than the professional competence and dispassion America expects from its main spy agency, is cause for concern. The CIA, an anonymous agency hand told Newsday, "is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda."

The CIA's contention that the administration skewed intelligence to suit its purposes and ignored facts that did not fit into its plans has been proven out, but the White House is not just being paranoid. The leaks of classified CIA reports embarrassing to the president at key points in the campaign suggest that some crossed the line from principled dissent into political activity, always a no-no for an intelligence agency.

It's too bad this is what it took for heads to roll at the CIA. The agency got a pass for its failures leading up to the attacks of September 11, which came out of left field, completely outside the paradigm that American intelligence had used. And the weapons of mass destruction fiasco can be pinned on the Bush administration, which didn't want to hear inconvenient doubts about its causus belli in Iraq. But the agency's failures since the invasion, so that 20 months after the fall of Baghdad the Marines are fighting house to house in Fallujah, are too numerous and conspicuous to be ignored. And its big picture blindness -- it missed the fall of the Soviet Union and the rise of radical Islam -- argues for fundamental reform in its practices and its thinking.

In his zealous pursuit of political enemies at the CIA, President Bush should remember that America needs an intelligence agency as omniscient and competent as people once believed the CIA to be, especially in a war where success depends on identifying the enemy and knowing his plans before he can carry them out. This, not the elimination of leakers and liberals, should be Mr. Goss' priority in reforming the CIA.

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ozonefiller
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posted November 22, 2004 04:46 PM     Click Here to See the Profile for ozonefiller     Edit/Delete Message   Reply w/Quote
The CIA was completely omniscient and competent back in the Kennedy years, look at the beautiful work they did through Black Ops back in November 1963!

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