Josh Marshall quotes the Nelson Report about war between the CIA and the administration.
and the war has just begun, intelligence community sources warn. The Iraq/Niger debacle is but one of “a whole series of stories which are ready to break”, a source told us today, adding, “I’ve never seen such hostility and disdain as now being expressed between the White House and the CIA. Never…”
Much as I don’t like the Bush administration’s policies and especially methods, I think this is bad. We need to make sure that the intelligence agencies don’t declare a media war on the necons in the Bush administration. Not by supporting the administration’s ideas, but by opposing them in the arena of politics and public opinion.
Intelligence agencies are by their nature very secretive organizations which do some of the dirty intelligence stuff that needs to be done. They do need to do their intelligence work free of political interference, but embarassing the government or getting it to agree with them is not part of their job.
Like Max Sawicky, I am not a fan of the CIA and I do believe that the administration was wrong. But it should not be the CIA which proves it wrong in the media. That job should be Congress’s.
The Valerie Plame incident may have been the trigger to this. If CIA officers believe she was deliberately burned by the White House for political reasons, after there were already strains from the Neocons pushing for more threatening intelligence estimates on Iraq, and then blaming the CIA when those estimates couldn’t be backed up, it’s no wonder that CIA would have felt like this was the last straw.
I agree.
But put yrself in the CIA’s shoes. You’ve been contsantly harassed and threatened, told to put square pegs in round holes, and then blamed if you don’t do it. On top of that you have the politicians on TV every night suggesting that it was YOU who told them the peg was round in the first place (or failed to convince them it was square.) It would be hard not to make yr case especially when you were in the right all along.
So yeah the CIA shouldn’t be leaking the truth, but can you blame them ?
That, and this Congress holding this Executive accountable is a joke.