Bad Blood Exists Between White House, CIA

Yahoo ^ | 10/29/05 | AP

[advance_copy]

Washington (AP) - Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff is learning one Washington lesson the hard way: Don't do battle with people who run covert operations for a living. The bad blood between the White House and CIA has been known for some time. But the 22-page indictment Friday of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby displays - in black and white - just how nasty relations had become between senior White House officials and the nation's spy chiefs.

[snip]

...former CIA official Lee Strickland, who was responsible for all disclosure activities at the CIA as chief of its information review group, said he can't recall a time in his 30 years at the agency when there was so much tension with the White House.

He said the situation highlights problems with the politicization of intelligence. "You want to keep the politics separate from the intelligence," he said.

[independentmind]

I admit that I would like to know a lot more about the circumstances surrounding the Vanity Fair spread. I also think that I would not like Joe Wilson as a person.

I still say that the guy in the pic crossed a line that he shouldn't have.

It's easy to do when you're faceless, and you command a mob at your fingertips. It's harder to do when you plaster you face all over an internet site.

[ScaniaBoy]

No evidence, definitely not, but surely the source of Mr Wilson's knowledge regarding the fake Niger documents should be investigated. And Mrs Wilson would make it quite high on the list of possible candidates.

Strange that MSM hasn't even broached that question. /sarcasm

[Southack]

"This is a direct result of Pres. Bush's behaving like an imbecile and refusing to fire all clinton political appointments, in all the cabinet offices and executive agencies, replacing them with his own loyal supporters. Clinton was smarter than Bush, by far, I hate to say. Clinton knew exactly how to change the very nature of the government. I suspect Clinton was getting much expert technical advice from foreign agencies."

You forgot your sarcasm tag.

President Clinton got **nothing** done in 8 years...he passed not a single one of his campaign promises. Not one.

In contrast, President Bush got his tax cuts, put Hussein in jail, got Syria out of Lebanon, banned partial birth abortion, deployed our national missile defenses, got Bill Prior and Janice Rogers Brown onto the federal bench, and in general has gotten everything that he's wanted.

GWB has Goss cleaning out the CIA. That will take time. Until then, the embedded leftists there are going to keep taking shots at him...but there will be fewer and fewer of them there as time goes on.

He couldn't have simply fired two thousand CIA agents in January of 2001...we would have been seen by our enemies as operating blind had he done that.

What President Bush is doing takes courage...and patience...rather than rashness.

[Grampa Dave]

"Poor little Victim Valerie. On the cover of Vanity Fair with her oily husband (whom she personally recommended for that phony assignment that has since brought him fame and fortune). Gimme a break."

Ditto!

[shield]

And during all of that Bush was telling us from Austin...'to keep our powder dry.' What a stressful time for us all.

[GBA]

LOL! Priceless!

[independentmind]

By all means, let's find out where the fake Niger documents came from.

That will tell us all much.

[Brilliant]

The more I hear about the CIA, the more I think we should just abolish it, fire everyone, and start over.

[GBA]

Whoa...Clinton smarter? More devious? Sure. Willing to do anything, and I do mean anything, to get what he wants? Yep, that's Bill Clinton and he has that over President Bush. Bush is constrained by morality and rule of law, whereas Clinton operated as though there were no restrictions and surrounded himself with like minded operatives. But Clinton smarter? I don't think so.

[BluH2o]

The CIA, without question, bang for the buck wise ... is the most inefficient, & ineffective national spy agency in the world. American taxpayers have been pouring money down that rat hole for decades and getting little or nothing in return. The CIA needs to be cleaned out from top to bottom and start over again ... rest assured little will be lost in the process.

[alrea]

If people like Valerie Plame weren't using the authority of their office for political activism instead of doing their job, the North Koreans and Iranians might not have advanced their nuclear research right under our noses.

We're seeing the edge of change threatening an organization that has become political and hence ineffective. We can probably thank them for 911 too.

[tarheelswamprat]

He is fighting the big battle. But if he doesn't cower to the radical right wing on every issue, they dump all over him and talk about how he never does anything and that Bush is a closet liberal.

This is an absolute crock. President Bush's signing of the blatantly unconstitutional CFR (campaign finance reform) legislation, to cite just one example, has nothing to do with the civil war over control of foreign policy raging inside the Beltway.

There are many "big battles" under way right now, and the President is addressing some of them very well, and some of them abysmally. The "radical right wing" you disparage so erroneously with respect to this particular issue actually stands firmly with the President and our military and implacably opposed to the treasonous lefists dominating the CIA and State Department.

They are champing at the bit for him to drop the failed policy of trying to appease and placate them and to challenge them (and their media allies) head-on. They are ready and waiting for him to lead, to give the word, and they will mobilize like the decadent Beltway crowd could never imagine.

[BluH2o]

The CIA, without question, bang for the buck wise ... is the most inefficient, & ineffective national spy agency in the world. American taxpayers have been pouring money down that rat hole for decades and getting little or nothing in return. The CIA needs to be cleaned out from top to bottom and start over again ... rest assured little will be lost in the process.

[Ben Hecks]

A sober-minded case can be made that at least some people in the CIA may have acted inappropriately to discredit the administration as a way of salvaging their own reputations after the intelligence debacles of 9-11 and Iraqi WMD.

Perhaps the CIA was also a little put off by a group of Able Danger military intelligence amateurs that probably produced more actionable intelligence in three years than the CIA did in three decades.

[ScaniaBoy]

Yes that's part of it - although some documents we already know came from La Belle France.

But that was not the question I raisedm but which you elegantly, skirted. So reiterating:

Mr Wilson claimed he knew about the forged documents long before they had been given publicity, but the CIA did not receive them until well after Mr Wilson's Niger journey and thereby his association with the CIA was terminated. So how did he know about them?

Now he claims that several of his statements were mistakes, but were they? or had he been told about the documents from sources inside the CIA?

see this link: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1509007/posts

[festus]

Agreed. GWB was trying to show them we mean them no harm.

It doesn't work with Leftists or Jihadis.

[ClaireSolt]

Just a note to remind you that papa Bush was the CIA director and his son is no fool in that department. Maybe you know that it is impossible to fire a bad teacher. Multiply that by ten and you have the degree of difficulty of firing civil service employees. Fortunately, Porter Goss made some mad enough to quit.

The most shocking failure of the government has been the failure of the CIA to catch al Quaeda and know Iraq's capabilities. Much more serious, imho, than Abu Gharib.

[tarheelswamprat]

It's very late in the day for a housecleaning, but Bush should certainly do something, rather than leave the mess for his successor to cope with.

His successor doesn't intend to cope with it, Tully, she plans to use it against us.

[top 2 toe red]

There is no evidence that Valerie Plame was anything but a victim here. Even if you hate her husband, she was never "fair game." Some would say, that not only is she NOT a victim...but, a very willing instigator in this plan to bring unjust criticism to the WH. She is, afterall, the one that suggested her unqualified, partisan hack of a husband for his Niger mission. Seems to me like that just about makes her "fair game."

[livius]

Well, it was a rude double entendre, I grant that. But that's the obverse side of getting your 15 minutes.

Still, it's hard to feel sorry for a woman who appears to have done nothing but profit from this whole thing. She's Wilson's #3, btw, but he must stay on good terms with his exes, because #2 (the French woman) appears to have aided in setting this whole Niger thing up. Go figure.