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The "Cranks" at the CIA
Weekly Standard ^ | 12/06/2004 | Matthew Continetti

Posted on 12/07/2004 2:50:39 PM PST by swilhelm73

ON THE FRIDAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING, Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's bin Laden unit, said CIA officials had given him "carte blanche" to attack President Bush anonymously last summer in publicity interviews for his book Imperial Hubris. Specifically, Scheuer said, former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow had told him "We're giving you carte blanche" to do whatever interviews he wanted, as long as the criticism in those interviews was directed toward Bush, not the CIA. Scheuer didn't follow the rules. He took on senior CIA officials in his publicity interviews. As a result, he said, he was "muzzled."

Last week Harlow stepped forward to challenge Scheuer's claim. "His assertion that I gave him 'carte blanche' to attack the president is absurd," Harlow told me in an email. And he continued:

Even [Scheuer] seems to have recognized that, since he was subsequently quoted in the Washington Post on November 2[5] as saying I told him in July to stop his incessant media commentary saying, "This is affecting the president, you're getting involved in the election. The agency is being interpreted as not being evenhanded" and also saying (quite accurately for once) that I told him some of his comments quoted in the media were "inappropriate for a currently serving intelligence officer."

Harlow is right to say that Scheuer has changed his story. Read Dana Priest's article, "Bringing Change, Not by the Book; CIA Officials Let Critic Publish," and you find a different version of events than that which Scheuer told reporters on November

19. Here's the key paragraph:

But two former CIA officials and the author himself said four top managers at the agency, not including Tenet, made the decision to let "Anonymous" publish and give interviews. The officials said they did so only because they feared that the author would resign, earning even more attention for a work they viewed as partly ludicrous. They said the agency underestimated how the book would play in the presidential campaign.

"Underestimated"?

Harlow, who, in all likelihood, is one of the "former CIA officials" quoted on background in Priest's story, repeated this version of events in his email. "His supervisors (not I) reluctantly permitted him to publish his book anonymously," he wrote. "In part because Agency regulations which [are] clear on preventing unauthorized disclosure of classified information . . . are not so clear on preventing expression of opinion."

"As the case in his first book," Harlow continued, "Scheuer was allowed to do interviews about his book. But when it became clear that he had gone well beyond that" and "had begun pontificating on areas that are clearly inappropriate for currently serving intelligence officers" Scheuer "was told he should not do that." But remember: The book that Scheuer was allowed to do interviews about was . . . well, a harsh indictment of American foreign policy and the current president. If Harlow is right, then CIA management still knew exactly what it was doing when it "reluctantly permitted" the publication of Imperial Hubris.

Little about this story makes sense. Here, for example, is what one former senior CIA official told THE WEEKLY STANDARD several weeks ago:

No one I know of at the Agency was happy about what [Scheuer] was saying and doing. His seniors tried and failed to manage him. It was believed that perhaps he could anonymously blow off steam without being turned into a celebrity whistle-blower. Some believed, naively, that the media would actually read some of Scheuer's wacky rantings (e.g. "American soldiers are paid to die" or his laudatory comments about [Osama bin Laden]) and dismiss him as a crank.

But such an explanation only raises more questions. For one: Why would the CIA have a "crank" on its payroll? For another: How did a "crank" who was prone to "wacky rantings" and needed to "blow off steam" become the head of the CIA bin Laden unit, and then maintain that position from 1996 until 1999? And finally: Why must the CIA rely on media outlets to "dismiss" its own employees?


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Government
KEYWORDS: billharlow; cia; harlow; scheuer; willamharlow
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1 posted on 12/07/2004 2:50:39 PM PST by swilhelm73
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To: swilhelm73
become the head of the CIA bin Laden unit, and then maintain that position from 1996 until 1999?

The dates tell everything you need to know.

2 posted on 12/07/2004 2:54:08 PM PST by Tom Bombadil
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To: swilhelm73

As I understand it, the CIA has a right to vet the final manuscript and demand changes or suppress it entirely. That's the agreement CIA employees have signed.

The claim that these clintonoid traitors in the CIA didn't know what was going to be in the book is plain ludicrous.

If they can't even figure out what's in their own agent's book, how do they propose to deal with harder problems, such as what the terrorists are planning to do next?


3 posted on 12/07/2004 2:54:26 PM PST by Cicero (Nil illegitemus carborundum est)
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To: Tom Bombadil

A wholesale cleaning out of all Clinton people in the CIA and the Defense Dept. is necessary. Clinton had to lower the security standards to get most of them in, in the first place.


4 posted on 12/07/2004 2:55:57 PM PST by shubi (Peace through superior firepower.)
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To: swilhelm73
Why must the CIA rely on media outlets to "dismiss" its own employees?

Why is there a CIA, period? Why are there "media outlets", period?

Are we talking gods and a priesthood?

It's ALL crap.

5 posted on 12/07/2004 2:58:48 PM PST by bvw
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To: Tom Bombadil

Yes it does! The CIA is full of self-serving money hungry book writers. And not so surprising, they say what ever they think will sell books at the time. ie: War-Bush-Lose= Bush bashing tome. Oops, Bush Wins Big= change the story.


6 posted on 12/07/2004 3:07:16 PM PST by marty60
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To: bvw

Uh huh, considering it probably would have taken the CIA a year to figure out Dan Rather faked a memo.


7 posted on 12/07/2004 3:11:35 PM PST by marty60
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To: marty60
It was a SINGLE customs agent that stopped the Seattle Tower millenium bombing, and a handful of regular NON-FEDERAL PENSIONATED folks who stopped the ONLY plane that was stopped on 9/11.

We could are ten thousand British Columbian Skateboarding Dopers and they do better stoned and cheaper too than the whole CIA. And we'd clearing out some of the raffic jams in the beltway too.

8 posted on 12/07/2004 3:17:26 PM PST by bvw
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Comment #9 Removed by Moderator

To: antoninartaud

and they are still leaking defeatist drivel to the NYT


10 posted on 12/07/2004 3:19:52 PM PST by Buckeye McFrog
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To: antoninartaud

Amen and AMEN


11 posted on 12/07/2004 3:20:06 PM PST by marty60
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To: Snapple; cyncooper
"Even [Scheuer] seems to have recognized that, since he was subsequently quoted in the Washington Post on November 2[5] as saying I told him in July to stop his incessant media commentary saying, "This is affecting the president, you're getting involved in the election. The agency is being interpreted as not being evenhanded" and also saying (quite accurately for once) that I told him some of his comments quoted in the media were "inappropriate for a currently serving intelligence officer."
12 posted on 12/07/2004 3:20:49 PM PST by Southack (Media Bias means that Castro won't be punished for Cuban war crimes against Black Angolans in Africa)
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To: bvw

SO right.


13 posted on 12/07/2004 3:22:08 PM PST by marty60
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To: swilhelm73
Why would the CIA have a "crank" on its payroll?

The are just civil servants nowadays. Once they make it past probation, they are hard to fire.

Once upon a time such a person might have gotten an "extremely interesting" field assignment.

No one leaves the office now.

14 posted on 12/07/2004 3:28:17 PM PST by siunevada
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To: swilhelm73
"Harlow, who, in all likelihood, is one of the "former CIA officials" quoted on background in Priest's story, repeated this version of events in his email. "His supervisors (not I) reluctantly permitted him to publish his book anonymously," he wrote. "In part because Agency regulations which [are] clear on preventing unauthorized disclosure of classified information . . . are not so clear on preventing expression of opinion."

Oh give me a break! They were holding the hammer over his employment. All they had to tell him was he could only publish a book of his opinions after his employment with the agency was terminated, and I would have used those exact words.

I work for a local (City) government. One of the first things I learned from the employee handbook was that my opinion of matters relating to City issues was forbidden from public discourse (such as the letter to the editor section of my local paper). Yes, that curtails my free speech, but I realized it as a necessity to my bosses' being able to conduct public policy without being hampered by internal malcontents.

Personally, I interpret this guy being able to publish his opinion as a probably non-direct directive issued by his superiors. They agreed with what he was doing, or they would have squashed him like a bug.

15 posted on 12/07/2004 3:34:46 PM PST by yooper (If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there......)
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To: bvw
"We could are ten thousand British Columbian Skateboarding Dopers and they do better stoned and cheaper too than the whole CIA. And we'd clearing out some of the raffic jams in the beltway too."

So what kind of skateboard do you ride?;)

16 posted on 12/07/2004 3:40:54 PM PST by yooper (If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there......)
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To: siunevada

I guess the listening stations in the Northern reaches of Alaska are closed now.


17 posted on 12/07/2004 3:56:50 PM PST by marty60
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To: Cicero

If there are "Progressives" in the CIA, it wouldn't surprise me one bit if they WANT this country to be attacked again so as to discredit Bush.


18 posted on 12/07/2004 4:04:50 PM PST by fire_eye (Socialism is the opiate of academia.)
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To: swilhelm73

This article would be hilarious if the implications weren't so serious. Why, indeed, did the CIA give this "crank" such an important position?


19 posted on 12/07/2004 4:29:08 PM PST by Steve_Seattle
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To: Shermy; Fedora; Howlin

fyi


20 posted on 02/09/2005 6:06:08 AM PST by piasa (Attitude Adjustments Offered Here Free of Charge)
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