The "Cranks" at the CIA

Weekly Standard ^ | 12/06/2004 | Matthew Continetti

[Tom Bombadil]

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.

[Cicero]

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?

[shubi]

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.

[bvw]

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.

[marty60]

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.

[marty60]

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

[bvw]

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.

[Buckeye McFrog]

and they are still leaking defeatist drivel to the NYT

[marty60]

Amen and AMEN

[Southack]

"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."

[marty60]

SO right.

[siunevada]

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.

[yooper]

"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.

[yooper]

"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?;)

[marty60]

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

[fire_eye]

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.

[Steve_Seattle]

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

[piasa]

fyi