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The Real Story Inside the CIA
Newsmax ^ | Monday, Nov. 22, 2004 4:59 p.m. EST | Newsmax

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."


TOPICS: Politics/Elections; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: cia; cialeak; goss; intelligencereform; kappes; scheuer; stephenfhayes; sulick
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To: Perdogg

Pressure wash. About time.


21 posted on 11/22/2004 3:31:48 PM PST by TADSLOS (Right Wing Infidel since 1954)
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To: Perdogg

F the MSM and what they think of the purge at the CIA. Go Director Goss, thoroughly clean this cesspool of all the disloyal Clintonistas.


22 posted on 11/22/2004 3:43:34 PM PST by Scales (Earth First, we will mine the other planets later)
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To: Perdogg
"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."

Hmmm... I'm disappointed in Goss... no mention of firing squads.

23 posted on 11/22/2004 3:49:51 PM PST by AmericaUnited
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To: wildwood
If I'm not mistaken their resigning still puts them on the FEDERAL RETIREMENT list if they have the time in. Which is BS.. If they resign let them find some-other place to feather their nest.
24 posted on 11/22/2004 3:50:17 PM PST by snowman1
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To: Perdogg

Grey Suit Ping.


25 posted on 11/22/2004 3:53:41 PM PST by NotJustAnotherPrettyFace (Michael <a href = "http://www.michaelmoore.com/" title="Miserable Failure">"Miserable Failure"</a>)
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To: Perdogg
"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."

That's the honorable way to do it.

26 posted on 11/22/2004 3:54:19 PM PST by bvw
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To: Straight Vermonter
close, it's a BMD... 8^)
27 posted on 11/22/2004 4:00:57 PM PST by Chode (American Hedonist ©®)
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To: Perdogg

Back biting, but kissing careerists infect every aspect of our society. It can have deadly results when those who are charged with protecting us forget their responsibilities and engage in this nonsense.


28 posted on 11/22/2004 4:02:18 PM PST by Enterprise (The left hates the Constitution. Islamic Fascism hates America. Natural allies.)
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To: conshack
"One agency at a time. Condi will begin her quest soon."

Hehehehe. W knows too that the deadenders in the CIA and State Department are going to go nuclear. The left is going to go absolutely nuts before all is said and done...

29 posted on 11/22/2004 4:08:42 PM PST by eureka! (It will not be safe to vote Democrat for a long, long, time...)
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To: Perdogg
The Real Story: CIA R US.

{Durn it, how do you make a backwards R?}

30 posted on 11/22/2004 4:11:06 PM PST by Navy Patriot
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To: conshack
God I hope so! That "foggy bottom" is fifty (50) years out of date.

Note how they allow all the immigrants to enter the US but none of the immigrants live in their precious neighborhood.
31 posted on 11/22/2004 4:22:56 PM PST by Tannerone
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To: cyncooper

FYI


32 posted on 11/22/2004 5:03:37 PM PST by MizSterious (First, the journalists, THEN the lawyers.)
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To: Steve_Seattle
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."

And you can be assured that the heads sent rolling would have a quite different set of owners.

33 posted on 11/22/2004 5:47:20 PM PST by okie01 (The Mainstream Media: IGNORANCE ON PARADE)
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To: MizSterious
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.

Ya don't say. Next thing we'll hear that reporters also regurgitate storylines from the DNC fax machine!

Go, Porter!

Thanks for the ping.

34 posted on 11/22/2004 6:23:19 PM PST by cyncooper (And an angel still rides in the whirlwind and directs this storm)
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