Posted on 11/22/2004 2:33:11 PM PST by Perdogg
An old CIA hand, still with the agency, recently told NewsMax to read an article by Stephen Hayes for the Weekly Standard.
Story Continues Below
This story, our friend said, explains what is going on at the CIA. The agency's new director, Porter Goss, has stirred up a hornets' nest - make that a vipers' nest - at the nation's chief intelligence agency.
For starters he has dared to take steps to plug the flood of leaks gushing out of the company's headquarters in Langley, Va.
We figured Goss must have been doing something good when the main recipients of the CIA leaks were the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Of course, the leakers are outraged, along with the journalists who have been the beneficiaries of their leaks.
Several of the CIA's top officials who have long been part of the problem have abandoned ship, probably just before they were due to be jettisoned by Goss and his aides.
Writing in the Nov. 29 issue of the Weekly Standard, the savvy Hayes pulled aside the curtain of secrecy at Langley to reveal a sordid story of spies who couldn't shoot straight at terrorists, but can cleverly take aim and snipe at their ultimate boss, the president of the United States.
The confrontation between the spies who couldn't spy and their new boss began when Goss' aide, the tough, blunt-spoken Patrick Murray, his former top man at the House Intelligence Committee, told the agency's associate deputy director of counterterrorism on Nov. 5 that the leaks were to stop.
He had good reason to make that demand, as Hayes revealed:
A leak to the ever so-cooperative Times, which appeared on the paper's front page on Sept. 16, smack in the middle of the presidential campaign, claimed that the CIA believed that prospects for success in Iraq ranged from bleak to grim. The story and its timing meshed with John Kerry's effort to paint postwar Iraq as Vietnam in the desert.
In October, less than two weeks after Goss was confirmed, "past and current agency officials" sabotaged Goss' pick to be executive director by blabbing to the Post that Michael Kostiw, who Hayes described as "a respected former CIA official and immediate past staff director of the House terrorism subcommittee," had been arrested for shoplifting in 1981 and subsequently resigned from the CIA. "He is one of the brightest minds in the intelligence community," a senior national security official told Hayes months before Goss was nominated. Kostiw withdrew from consideration one day after the leak.
On Nov. 13, the dispute over CIA insider leaks was leaked to the Post. That story and a follow-up the next day made clear that this was a case of the good guys against the bad guys. The good guys being disinterested civil servants: an unnamed "highly respected case officer" and Stephen Kappes, deputy CIA director for operations, who the Post wrote had persuaded Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi to renounce weapons of mass destruction this year. Noted Hayes, "Some might point out that the capture of Saddam Hussein, which preceded Gaddafi's renunciation by five days, and the Iraq war were also, well, persuasive." On the other side were the top advisers Goss had brought with him from the Hill, who the Post described as "disgruntled" former CIA officials "widely known" for their "abrasive management style" and for criticizing the agency. One had left the CIA after an undistinguished intelligence career, and another is known for being "highly partisan."
Michael Scheuer, head of the CIA's bin Laden unit from 1996 to 1999 who recently quit the agency in order to be free to criticize the intelligence community, admitted that his CIA superiors had given him permission to speak to the media anonymously to "bash the president." NewsMax's CIA friend tells us the move was "unprecedented" and that "the broke all the rules for Scheuer." Hayes noted: "Authorized or not, the result of the steady flow of leaks was the same. Bush was portrayed as incompetent and his policies disastrous. CIA-friendly reporters, eager to keep their sources happy, stuck to the agency line."
On Wednesday, the Times ran a front-page story about an internal memo that Goss had sent agency employees. The headline: "New CIA Chief Tells Workers to Back Administration Policies." Don't undermine your own government? Imagine that. A CIA spokesman criticized the Times' biased account of the memo, which stressed that CIA analysis should be made without prejudice.
Wrote Hayes: "Conventional wisdom was already firm: Goss and his cronies, embittered CIA failures all, were out to exact political revenge. John Roberts, anchoring CBS Evening News, wondered aloud, 'What went wrong?' A Boston Globe editorial claimed the Goss 'purge' was likely the 'settling of partisan scores rather than an effort to introduce genuine accountability.'"
Murray had told the associate deputy director of counterterrorism that the new agency leadership would not tolerate media leaks. This person reported the conversation to Sulick, who alerted his boss, Kappes. A meeting was hastily arranged. Goss participated in most of the tense meeting. After he left, however, a source familiar with the confrontation told Hayes that Murray reiterated the warning about leaks. Sulick took the advice as a threat and, calling Murray "a Hill puke," threw a stack of papers in his direction.
When Goss sought to call Kappes and Sulick on the carpet for the unprofessional behavior, they did not take it nicely. Kappes refused Goss' order that Sulick be reassigned to another location. Kappes, according to Hayes, refused the order.
White House officials refused to discuss the conversations involving Goss and Kappes, but the result was clear enough: Kappes and Sulick resigned.
Hayes explained the unholy alliance between dissident CIA employees and parts of the media by noting it appeared that reporters who cover intelligence, "particularly beat reporters from the Washington Post, the New York Times, Newsday, and Knight Ridder newspapers," often merely regurgitate storylines presented to them by the most political current and former CIA officials.
Democrat pols, he added, "furrow their brows about the partisan Republicans. And so we arrive at yet another bizarre moment in the often perplexing political sociology of Washington: The political left and its friends in the establishment press are in a full embrace of the most illiberal and secretive component of the U.S. government."
There are signs, however, that change is coming.
"In the days and weeks ahead of us," Goss wrote, "I will announce a series of changes - some involving procedures, organization, senior personnel, and areas of focus for our action."
next stop - foggy bottom
WOW.
Goooooooooo Porter, GO!
Headline:
CIA sets mood for scaling back operations by eliminating department of loose lips.
A new broom sweeps clean.
More positive signs this administration is serious.
"In the days and weeks ahead of us," Goss wrote, "I will announce a series of changes - some involving procedures, organization, senior personnel, and areas of focus for our action."
All 'leakers' to be beheaded.....
Oh, well...............one's own,.....'pro-choice'.....cultural leanings
/sarcasm
To make the point, as forcefully as possible..IMHO Goss should have fired the two, instead of allowing them to resign
I am hoping there are some quick prosecutions over violation of secrecy agreements on the part of some of these departing officials---"
Don't hold your breath. These guys may not be very good at spying to get information from hard targets--but they are extremely good at laying out disinformation on their enemies without leaving any tracks.
Let 'em go--and send the remaining recalcitrant executives to posts in FarOutistan
In so few other nations on this earth, do purges of the national intelligence apparatus take place without bullets or blood. These ingrates should be thanking GOD they live in the U.S.
BMP
Self ping
Yes, one down but the State Department still needs fumigating.
It's interesting that - after years of demonizing and criticizing the CIA, accusing it of abuse and incompetence - the MSM is suddenly defending the old hands at the CIA. Why? Because Bush is trying to clean house, and anything Bush does must be undermined. If Kerry were doing the same thing, the MSM would be praising him for his "courageous and long-overdue efforts to clear out dead wood."
Go Porter! Go Porter! We wanna see some hides up on the shed wall!
The calculations were in place: the MSM would deliver 15 points to Kerry with the collusion of bureaucrats like the CIA.
But then, out of nowhere all these damned evangelicals showed up.
As the old saying goes: If you're going to kill the King, make sure you don't miss.
Yes the Running Mouth Disease infecting the CIA may be getting a cure? Amazing how these slugs at the CIA are more interested in leaking BS to the MSM, than killing OBL. Obviously their priorities are all screwed up.
Yes, one down but the State Department still needs fumigating.
One agency at a time. Condi will begin her quest soon.
oh, i gotta feeling THAT is going to be happening down the road on other levels, too....
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.