Excerpt from Spy Valerie and the rogue CIA
So why didn’t Mr. Bush clean out the dead wood at CIA?
A reasonable guess is that his father warned against it. George Bush, Sr. is a former CIA Director, after all, and is intimately familiar with its ways. He was a GOP Congressman during Watergate, when Mark Felt destroyed Richard Nixon for thwarting his lifelong ambition to succeed J. Edgar Hoover.
Paraphrasing LBJ’s immortal words, it was smarter to keep the CIA inside the tent pissing out rather than the other way around. So George Tenet wasn’t fired, and as far as we can tell, neither was anybody else. Instead, the President met with Tenet every day for five years to get the latest about al Qaeda, and surely gained a deeper understanding of the intelligence maze at the same time.
The White House has played a very careful poker game since then, picking its cards one by one until it was ready to make the big move. Today, George Tenet is out, State and Defense are in the hands of Bush loyalists, the House and Senate have GOP majorities, and the new CIA Director is not an insider. The CIA itself is now subordinate to the new National Director of Intelligence, John Negroponte, a no-nonsense diplomat in the Kissinger mold. When Goss became Director, Agency bureaucrats complained bitterly to the press. Mr. Bush now holds all the cards, and it is time to play them.
How does one fire a large portion of your intelligence community at such a grave time in history? I can't help but wonder just how many terrorist attacks against Americans have been thwarted by the Bush Administration since September 11th. The President takes the heat, even from us, but I suspect he's been playing an incredible game of Texas Hold em.
Another Freeper said this article is already on FR in various posts, and I agree. The only difference is, FR doesn't write the 'published' columns.
I wholly agree he's playing an incredible game of Texas Hold 'Em, a game that's far from over- and he inspires me every day.
I agree with you. And I'm glad that the Prez still has the Secret Service around him. He has most definitely rattled the cage at the CIA, just look at all the leaks designed to reflect badly on him. I hope two more years is enough time for him to fix the CIA problem...or at least make a serious dent.