Posted on 09/26/2007 11:26:32 AM PDT by Paul Ross
Top Republican Rips CIA Spy Chief
By: Kenneth R. Timmerman, NewsMax.com, Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, had harsh words for the new head of the National Clandestine Service, the CIA’s top spy, in an exclusive interview with NewsMax.
Michael J. Sulick, whose appointment was quietly announced 10 days ago, was called back to the agency after three years in the private sector, where he had gone following a bitter dispute with then-CIA Director Porter Goss and his top aides.
Both Sulick and his immediate boss, Stephen Kappes, resigned in November 2004 after Goss' aides caught them in an illegal intelligence operation aimed at countering and undermining Bush administration policies with which they disagreed. I detail this previously-undisclosed CIA covert operation in my new book, "Shadow Warriors: Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender," which will be released in early November.
Kappes was called back last year by Goss' successor, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, to become deputy director of CIA. Now Hayden has called back Sulick as well.
"Sulick and Kappes were disloyal," Hoekstra told NewsMax in an exclusive interview.
"They were guilty of insubordination, and never should have been brought back," the congressman said. "These appointments are a slap at the president, and a slap in the face of Porter Goss by those who didn’t want to follow the path of reforming the agency."
Sulick was "the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time," he added.
Hoekstra realizes that his criticism is not shared by the new Democratic chairman of the intelligence committee, Rep. Sylvestre Reyes.
"Mike Sulick is a man of high integrity, beloved by the workforce, and someone who understands the unique challenges of human intelligence collection," Reyes told NewsMax. "I look forward to working with him."
In announcing his appointment on Friday, Sept. 14, CIA Director Hayden called Sulick "a seasoned operations officer [who] earned a reputation for superior tradecraft and sound judgment."
Hayden said that Sulick planned to focus on "innovative operational platforms, information sharing – within CIA and beyond – cover, technology, and liaison relationships." He called him "a powerful addition to our agency leadership team."
Asked why President Bush would reappoint Sulick and Kappes to top CIA positions after they had tried to undermine Bush administration policies, a White House spokesperson ducked the issue.
"The CIA has their own hiring authority – so we are not involved in the hiring process with the exception of the statutory political slots," Emily A. Lawrimore told NewsMax.
But a senior White House official acknowledged that president Bush "was aware" of the appointments, and that Sulick "is this administration’s pick" for the top spy job.
CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield also praised Sulick, and insisted that his appointment had been fully vetted within the administration.
"The CIA is part of the executive branch,” Mansfield told NewsMax. "It would be wrong to assume the administration did not know of this vital appointment in advance. That’s not the way the relationship works."
Sulick’s appointment has caused some Bush supporters to wonder if the president is really in control of his own administration.
Hoekstra believes the CIA has a long way to go to reform its human intelligence capabilities.
"Sulick and Kappes represent the 'old guard' of the Directorate of Operations, the culture where officers advanced on the number of reports they filed, not the quality of their information," Hoekstra told NewsMax.
"These were the guys who couldn’t recruit sources, who wouldn’t talk to defectors, who wouldn’t investigate Iraqi WMD in the past and refuse to investigate it now," he added.
Hoekstra is not alone in his criticism.
Duane (Dewey) Clarridge, an old Middle East hand who was indicted because of his involvement in the Iran-Contra affair and later pardoned by President George H.W. Bush, frequently talks to agency insiders and former case officers.
"Kappes' philosophy is that liaison [with foreign intelligence services] is the most important part of intelligence, that we don’t do unilateral operations. This is pure lunacy!" he told NewsMax.
The reliance on liaison operations has led to spectacular intelligence failures, including several surrounding the pre-war intelligence on Iraq’s WMD programs that I will detail in "Shadow Warriors."
"This is how we get taken to the cleaners," Clarridge said. "This is how we get fed lies by other services for their own reasons."
Over-reliance on foreign intelligence services "prevents you from recruiting your own sources, because you get used to only taking intel that is offered to you by liaison services," Clarridge added.
Hoekstra noted dryly that he was out of the country – visiting Pakistan, Afghanistan, and making his ninth trip to Iraq – when Hayden announced Sulick’s return to the agency.
"Hayden told us that Kappes' role [as deputy CIA director] would be limited, and that he wouldn’t get involved in HUMINT. I wouldn’t have expected Kappes to come back to the agency to put Sulick back in."
Hoekstra is concerned that the message sent by these appointments will demoralize some of the younger case officers he met during his recent South Asian tour.
"What this does is say to the bureaucracy that drove out Porter Goss, we will reward you who opposed change."
Hayden has stated repeatedly his commitment to change the way the CIA does business. "Our enemies are always learning and adapting. So is the CIA," he wrote in his strategic blueprint for the agency.
Hoekstra’s criticism was not aimed at Hayden’s intentions, but at the entrenched bureaucracy he feels has been resistant to change and is stuck in a Cold War mentality.
At a meeting on Tuesday with bloggers at the Heritage Foundation, Hoekstra expanded on his earlier remarks to NewsMax.
Kappes and Sulick "are the same kind of people who were there with the Deutch doctrine" of the mid-1990s, which limited the CIA from going out and recruiting people who had criminal records or were suspected of human rights violations.
"And we wondered why there was nobody sitting around the table with Saddam who was a paid informer of the CIA," he said. “We wondered why we didn’t have anybody in the cave with Bin Laden. In the 1990s, the message went out, don’t recruit people with backgrounds that would embarrass the administration."
That "politically correct" culture "has to change," he said.
Under Goss' leadership, the mandate went out, "recruit the people you need who will keep America safe, to prevent the next terrorist attack."
With the return of Sulick and Kappes, Hoekstra fears that CIA case officers in the field "will start self-selecting" in their agent recruitment and their reporting.
During his recent tour of agency hot spots, Hoekstra heard first-hand from field operatives that they were "lawyering up" in anticipation of a return to the bad old days of political correctness.
"One of these days, it’s going to catch up to them," he said. "That is no way to run the agency."
Other meritorious commentary:
The question about who’s really in charge in Washington has been settled. The amateurs who came to town after the election of the year 2000 and started interfering with the professionals and experts making up the real government have been put in their place or made to resign, and it’s back to business as usual in the interval of waiting for the next democrat party administration to arrive.
Another “Top Republican” that I’ve never heard of.
Should Kappes and Sulick be recognized and promoted as seasoned intel professionals who almost overthrew the US president, or sacked as incompetents who failed to overthrow the US president?
The fact that they are back on the payroll means that CIA is unreformable.
We’ll be reading more about our state secrets in the NYT. WHo’s next, Mary McCarthy????
Of course we may be dead by then due to the idiotic decision to bring these guys back.
This is what used to be called the Directorate of Operations, right?
Guess Congressmen don't count with you! And perhaps you need to pay more attention to espionage issues then...you might have noted his name then...
Representative Hoekstra has continuously represented the 2nd District of Michigan since he won the '92 election. He plans to run again 2008.
And he has the guts to speak out against the enemy: Hoekstra angered many American Muslims when he described the Islamic Society of North America as a group of "radical jihadists"
I believe he's the ranking member of the intelligence committee in the House and an all around great guy.
Yup, in part. Its formation was announced Oct. 18, 2005.
There is a very nice cogent summary of this beast in Wikipedia, to wit:
The National Clandestine Service (NCS) is the American national authority for coordinating U.S. human intelligence (HUMINT) services. The organization absorbed the entirety of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)'s Directorate of Operations, and also coordinates HUMINT between the CIA and other agencies, including, but not limited to, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Diplomatic Security Service, Defense Intelligence Agency, Air Intelligence Agency, Army Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, and Office of Naval Intelligence. The current Director of the NCS is Jose Rodriguez, who will be replaced by Michael Sulick on September 30, 2007. The Director of the NCS reports to the CIA Director.
Mary Mapes.
Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich. worked hard to get the captured Iraq documents released. Some of these documents were translated by FReeper 'jveritas.' Hoekstra works hard for the fight on the WOT. He's a good guy!
Mary Mapes was the CBS producer that got fired in Rathergate, Mary McCarthy was the senior manager at the CIA traitor leaking stuff to the NYT. She was asked to’retire’. I can’t recall her exact title.
This is just depressing. We’ve rehired a guy who’s claim to fame is that he undermined and tried to destabilize the Bush administration...not AlQueada. As a tagline around here somwewhere says: some mornings it’s just not worth trying to chew through the leather straps...
He's a superb guy with lots of credentials to be serving where he did, as did former Rep. Porter Goss, who became CIA chief until the long knives at "the Farm" came out after him for not supporting their failures!
Your ignorance does not diminish his importance.
Amen, indeed he is a good guy and it seems form the article that he believes that there should be more work done on Saddam WMD, it is not over yet and he is absolutely right.
PING
I trust Hoekstra a whole lot more than I trust Bush.
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