Mark Steyn: Bigger than Watergate

The Spectator (U.K.) ^ | 10/11/03 | Mark Steyn

[MamaLucci]

And think who they are at war with...
Not Bin Laden.....but the President of the United States......amazing huh?

What is so amazing is that the "watchdog press" is totally
ignoring this obvious truth for their own
political purposes.
The enemy is within.

[MEG33]

It wasn't Larry Johnson.It was someone who went through class with her.Larry J is a dunce..A PBS kinda guy.I agree that a faction in the CIA is after Bush.

[Wolfstar]

Thanks for the ping. I think Steyn, who is a brilliant analyst of the current political scene, is very close to the truth in this column. I don't think any observant person with an IQ above that of warm beer would fail to miss what the Wilson affair says about the CIA. Frankly, it's terrifying in a post-9/11 world. What I keep wondering is why President Bush continues to tolerate Tenet when the man has been a dramatic failure just this year alone.

Although I absolutely adore President Bush and would virtually walk through fire for him, he is a human being subject to all the human failings as the rest of us. Is it possible that his famous sense of loyalty is misplaced as regards Tenet? Or is it more a matter of there just being too much on the President's plate the last couple of years for him to want to bring in a new CIA director? Or is it something else? Not even having an inkling is deeply worrisome precisely because of what Steyn concludes:

"If sending Joseph C. Wilson IV to Niger for a week is the best the world’s only hyperpower can do, that’s a serious problem. If the Company knew it was a joke all along, that’s a worse problem. It means Mr Bush is in the same position with the CIA as General Musharraf is with Pakistan’s ISI: when he makes a routine request, he has to figure out whether they’re going to use it to try and set him up. This is no way to win a terror war."

[Timesink]

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[My2Cents]

Thanks for posting. With the sad death of Michael Kelly, Mark Steyn has become my favorite.

I'm currently reading BUSH VS. THE BUREACRACY by Laurie Mylorie, and it's chilling to realize the possibility that there IS cooked intelligence coming out of the CIA and State Department, but that it's cooked in a way to undermine the War on Terror.

[ravingnutter]

Hmmmm...a Freeper on another thread that we could not fire the CIA because they were covered under the Pendleton Act, which at first I believed, but this conflicting comment from camas compelled me to search out the real truth and it shows they definitely are not...

It was given (1949) special powers under the Central Intelligence Act: the director may spend agency funds without accounting for them; the size of its staff is secret; and employees, exempt from civil service procedures, may be hired, investigated, or dismissed as the CIA sees fit.

Fact Monster

Okay...so now I guess I can go back to my original statement...FIRE THEM ALL AND START OVER!

[ravingnutter]

Most of these people unfortunately can't be fired, because they're members of the federal employee union.

I kept hearing conflicting statements on this, so I did a search. CIA employees cannot join a union...

Employees with direct national security duties, including the military, CIA and FBI, are barred from union membership.

USA Today Article

[malia]

In the ----" Set up? Anatomy of the contrived Wilson "scandal"" it says---
Before he left Niger, Wilson said he briefed the ambassador on his findings. After returning to Washington...he provided "a detailed briefing to the CIA [and]...the State Department African Affairs Bureau. There was nothing secret or earth-shattering in my report, just as there was nothing secret about my trip...Though I did not file a written report..."

I've felt this was not an 'official WH request - one more contrived by Wilson and friends.

[My2Cents]

Great characterization: Wilson comes over like a total flake — not a sober striped-pants diplomat but a shaggy-maned ideologically driven kook whose hippie-lyric quotes make a lot more sense than his neocon-bashing diatribes for leftie dronefests like the Nation.

Steyn is a one-man truth squad. The Administration would do well making him the White House spokesman, replacing that nice, but weak, Scott McClellan (no doubt related to Gen. George B. McClellan), or to at least require McClellan to simply read Steyn's columns as the official White House statement of the day.

[My2Cents]

Whoever had the bright idea to send this idiot over to Nigeria on such an important and delicate matter needs to be fired.

Well, I guess that would be Wilson's wife.

[My2Cents]

Now, that's the nub of the matter. Tenet? Ultimately, this Clinton hold-over needs to take responsibility for the way his agency is undermining the expressed policy of the President of the United States.

[My2Cents]

we won't hear of it because of the criminal investigation.

Has it even been established that a crime was committed?

[My2Cents]

And think who they are at war with... Not Bin Laden.....but the President of the United States......amazing huh?

Didn't this used to be called "treason"? I guess nothing's changed since the days of Alger Hiss. Where is Joe McCarthy when we need him?

[MEG33]

We won't know until the criminal investigation is over!!Sigh...which just breeds rumors.

[jpl]

Thank you, I stand corrected on that. I'd bet that it's probably still very difficult to fire FBI and CIA employees though, barring some sort of criminal behavior or other serious malfeasance.

[Bernard Marx]

Exactly what do our J schools teach?

Marxism and political correctness. This began in the late 1950s and has steadily gotten worse. Big schools like Missouri and Columbia have always been ultra left-wing.

[MEG33]

FYI

[r9etb]

Talk about an understatement! Whoever had the bright idea to send this idiot over to Nigeria on such an important and delicate matter needs to be fired. ASAP.

Well, that depends on whether or not this bright idea was accompanied by an equally bright idea to use this buffoon as a cover for a real intel operation.

If Wilson was just a cover, then this thing blowing up into a big hoo-raw has to be counted as a definite plus for the intel guys.

[maica]

It must drive the left crazy that they so thoroughly infiltrated this nation's institutions, right down to reducing the intelligence apparatus to a sad joke, and still lost the cold war.

The CIA was taken by surprise when the Soviet Union collapsed. I do not know where they spend their $30 billion dollar budget each year. (That is over $80 million dollars every DAY.)