CIA to be "purged" of "soft leakers and liberal Democrats"
 

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationwo...-top-headlines



This is rather disturbing. It seems to me that our intelligence agencies ought to serve the national interest and the truth first, not the particular president who happens to be in office.

I knew about this a while ago (bout three weeks actually). I don't mind it, most leaks come from operatives that are dissatisfied with the government in power. So, good riddance to 'em I say.

1984...

Just my 2 cents.

I really wouldn't consider the leaks mentioned in the last paragraph damaging, I think it's something that should be said. If the guys gathering intelligence, going over it to see what needs to be done, tells the President, then what they told him to do isn't happening, how is anything suppose to be done?

And the fact that it seems like the CIA told the President that this, this, and this needed to be done, but it wasn't, or carried out like it should, but the President made everything seem like it was going as smoothly as possible, then this former member writes a book explaining that it's really NOT going as smoothly as it should, it's something that should be said, and taken seriously.

The President seems to be putting people in the CIA that will do things the way he wants, and all information that they receive will be twisted to make it look like that everything is going just as predicted, and couldn't go any better, and George Bush is a freakin genius. Plus, nobody around who knows how messed up the system is and then exposing its problems, no body is the wiser.

It is very disturbing, and hopefully there are guys still in the CIA who can maybe reshape whenever Bush moves on, or even during this administration.

A portion of it has to do with a bunch of the liberal analysts getting together and trying to entice the NY Times and CBS to do that story on the explosives in Iraq, although they wanted the news media to do it a day before the election (which would have cost Bush the election, I think) instead of a week before. It's not just difference of opinion here, but some of these guys have broken laws, but are getting a smack on the wrist and a pink slip instead of jail-time.

A party-controlled secret government agency would be a bad thing... Let's hope it's not the witch hunt the article suggests.

I can see the justification for it, but it doesn't mean I have to like it. Sounds awfully fishy to me.

You see, they had problems with the CIA revealing this thing called "reality" during the run up to the Iraq war, and they don't want that problem in the future. I suppose that's why they're doing this.

intelligence is supposed to say what's really happening. i don't get the impression such a filtering of the message is going to reflect the reality of the situation.

Agencies such as the State Department, the FBI, and the CIA should be semi-independent of the Presidency in order to ensure a plurality of opinions and conclusions. In fact, Kissinger distrusted executive agencies to such a degree that he suggested a President should engage in high-level actions without letting these agencies know. He believed that each agency's institutional culture and biases were so fettering that they slowed down top-level action.

He was extreme, of course, and nobody but him has really advocated that. But the idea is, these agencies are supposed to specialize in their areas and advise the President according to what they believe, based on their experience and knowledge. They are NOT supposed to be mindless arms of the President's will, supporting utterly his policies and doing so without question. When this happens, the President no longer gets the best information and advice. He or she should be making decisions based on the recommendations of his trusted advisors, not setting policy in spite of said advice.

Eliminating the presence of people who question his decisions in the government is a frightening example of Bush trying more and more to become a tyrant, in control of everything with opposition from no-one. Replacing these people (many of whom are the best people for their jobs) with those who agree with his policy, regardless of what they are, is a disturbing policy. Truly scary.

And I'd say this if it were Kerry or Bush doing this.

You know I forswore posting on this board for a while, but I find myself drawn to it like a moth to a flame, or perhaps a Viking to an undefended Saxon village.

Anyways did it occur to anyone that perhaps the men being removed were the ones who were responsible for letting the 9/11 hijackers slip past the radar, or even more likely the ones who screwed up the WMD data on Iraq?

Perhaps it is not 'democrats and liberals' but 'incompetent agents' who are being removed and they in turn are spreading the idea its political like a typical disgruntled employee?

A few months ago no one posting about this being so awful would have had a single positive thing to say about the CIA, but now, after the dreaded 'L' word has been invoked, the CIA agents are just innocent victims of Bush's plans.

Does anyone think the CIA has done a good job in the last 12 years?

Perhaps it is not "democrats and liberals. Good riddence to them. I love how the article says they were disloyal to Bush. Give me a break. They were disloyal to thier country.

Ustow come on innocent victims of Bush's plan. They leaked crucial information. This could move to the topic of freedom of the press to report. Do you think it is okay for the press to report things from battle grounds if it is aiding the enemy and putting Americans in harms way?

By the way, it is not intelligence if you have some self-important under-deputy-assistant to the assistant director giving it away. If it's o.k. for leakers to spill what they want when they want, I want our tax dollars back.

Now that is scary.

Problems:

1) If all three departments are semi-independent, they cannot be directed towards a common goal and will not work together.

2) Having all of the power of intelligence or foreign policy without having to answer to anyone--not even the voters is a recipe for disaster and possible coup.

3) Forced plurality of opinions and conclusions gives a false equality of opinion that that does aid the executive. The executive needs advice and counsel based on fact and experience--institutionally required "on the other hand"edness leads to paralysis.

Something, anything, needs to be done with the CIA.
This is long overdue. Their credibity continues to fall.

If you want 1984, let the intelligence agencies run their own show and not be accountable to the executive or the voters. Let them leak what they want when they want with impunity. Let them decide how to spend tax dollars on information only they have and let them spin it to the press at their choosing. Free them from oversight so they can invade all of your rights, including being free from search and seizure without cause. Give them money, power, intelligence with no accountability to the executive or voters.

It's an open question for me.
The crucial task of running Central Intelligence is paramount.

I have questions about the performance of Porter Goss and I am interested in the current developments. I'm keeping an open mind on this one.

there was an article in the ny times friday or saturday that accused the cia of having been actively working to undermine bush. i assume it was a press release to situate the article above.
you would think that an institution like the cia would have an interest in maintaining a level of political pluralism internally, simply because political views often place blinders on information, stream how it is processed--and that different views would tend to impose different frames on the same material--so you might be able to get better interpretations of information that way.

from the outside, however, this looks like the trial sequence in oedipus.
we'll see how it plays out.

Eeek... I don't object to a cleaning of the CIA to improve its efficiency and plug a few holes. However, a hard target blanket search for "those soft leakers and liberal democrats", is quite a frightening way to put it. Liberal democrats aren't capable of performing in the CIA and thus should be removed based soley on their politics? If somebody has done something to show they aren't going to be loyal to the current administration, then kick them out... But a purge an opposing political party in a goverment agency? That is downright scary!!! What would be your (the supporters of this) reaction if Clinton had made a similar request with "conservative republicans" replacing "liberal democrats"?

It happens all the time and happened with the Clintons. White house travel office ring any bells? It isn't right to purge someone who generally agrees with Kerry more than W or the other way around, but there is nothing wrong with firing the leakers. Does anyone here think it is wrong to fire a leaker from the CIA?

I was thinking that before you said it. Let's hope that it's the truth, although I don't expect the exact truth to come out of an agency whose purpose requires secrecy. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt on this one until more evidence shows up.

I too shall keep an open mind.

I don't see anyone on TFP ever arguing that a shakeup was not in order.

So, why the mention of "liberal democrats" at all? Leakers are bad for an agency like the CIA, but to target deomocrats?

Who is the one mentioning it?

I'm saying thats just spin by people who should have been removed a long time ago.

Look guys, it's entirely impossible to go through the Company and get rid of every single Democrat in there, it's just not gonna happen. Like I said before, some of these guys were using the intelligence community as a way to influence the outcome of the election by bringing up the explosives. They're getting off light, they should be getting jail-time, what they did was highly illegal. What Porter Goss is doing is going through and getting rid of basically, the Cold Warriors who are used to the predictability of Russian actions. They're going to be bringing in a mass amount of younger people that think completely different from the current higher ups so they can adapt quickly to the less than predictable terrorist actions. This is by no means a purge of all Democrats in the Company, this is a purge of unimaginative thinking. The Company no longer recruits at Harvard, Yale, etc. They recruit from George Mason, UVA, Virginia Tech, and the like, and they want to get these people in there to get them crunching on the problems that need crunching on.

If you think this is reform, I'll point you towards the first two paragraphs of the article in question:

This is not an effort to get the old guard out, or increase professionalism. It's an effort to turn the CIA into a political arm of the White House. Making the CIA more political won't solve any intelligence problems, so let's not pretend that this purge is some kind of reform.

You know, if you can't trust an anonymous source, who can you trust?

Also the CIA should NOT be leaking anything, the CIA should not be playing politics, period. If these people were then bye bye, we don't need them. I would expect no less from any president who was faced with a hostile CIA.

This is scary.

I doubt that the article was slanted. It probably is true that "liberal democrats" are being targeted in the CIA and being told to leave. There have been many damaging leaks from the CIA over the last couple of years -- damaging to the present administration, not to the country. The leakers have disclosed a rush to war over little in the way of evidence that Iraq posed an imminent threat; disclosed mismanagement in the conduct of the war itself; and disclosed failings in our war on terror. It is typical for this administration to attack the ones who leak information instead of considering solutions or reconsidering policy in light of any disclosed failings.
For instance: Valerie Plame, Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neal, General Shinseky
(spelling?), etc.

The leaks are coming out of the CIA for a reason. And I don't think it has anything really to do wth partisan politics. The CIA is upset with Bush for sifting through prewar intelligence and deciding what it liked and what it didn't like
-- and only using info it liked. Then, when things went wrong, the CIA was made the scapegoat for giving Bush bad intelligence.

The leakers may well be motivated by patriotism and a desire to see the truth emerge.
Bush is motivated by revenge and a desire to see the truth kept under wraps.

If the CIA is made a partisan arm of the White House, dedicated to secrecy and protection of the President -- moreso than the country -- Lord, save us.

Something has been done and its called the USA Patriot Act but no one really tries to understand at least as far as making the differing branches work collaborately

I think the problem was partisan backstabbing. It's not unreasonable for Bush to want to "put out to pasture" the people who are leaking fraudulent or half true stories to the media in an effort to damage Bush's presidency.

They haven't been behaving in a non-partisan manner, and they are supposed to be non-partisan. They deserve to be shitcanned.

Why is telling the truth seen to be partisan? Do you therefore believe that Democrats inherently tell the truth while Republicans lie?

Bush's accountability grows less and less every day.

The CIA isnt in existance to tell the truth to anyone but the President and certain parts of Congress.

They are a SECRET agency, whoever leaks information must be held accountable.

hammer -> nail-head

i don't see why this is a big deal. Seaver got it right. If someone leaks information that is bad news. Maybe i am completly ignorant, but what does the gov't have to gain by screwing us.

If the government is misleading the public, shouldn't something be done about it? If the people who know the truth say nothing while the government spins us a lie, why shouldn't they say something? Surely the "Evil flourishes when good men do nothing" line that was used by some to justify the war applies here too?

It is not the job of some minion in the CIA to decide who is and who is not beling misled. If you given them the power to be "good men" then they also have the power to be bad guys and push their un-elected agenda, which seems decidely undemocratic.

Of course, they're protected by the Whistleblower Act if they find that some really illegal things were being conducted by their organization or the government itself. However, that does not give them the right to leak things to the press to push their political agenda no matter how much you may agree with one candidate or another, using your position to try and influence an election jeopardizes your job. That's why so many intel guys are registered as independents, they may lean more to the right, but they register as independents, because there's a chance that you get shit-canned if you voice your support for a candidate.

The CIA is supposed to be non-partisan. It was the partisan actions by those that wanted to see W out that got fired. And of course the headline of the article is going to say the CIA is being purged of liberal democrats. They want to make the prez look as bad as they can. The media has been a liberal spin machine ever since they've felt responsible for getting Nixon removed from office.

The CIA is an idealogical institution, therefore it is by nature incompetent. I can see these leaks as going both ways: either competent intelligence gatherers who are disturbed by the ideological sanitation, or incompetent intelligence gatherers who are avoiding the shuffle to the plank. Or maybe a mixture of both, hell, it's almost Thanksgiving!

I don't think government leaks are on the total bad; in some instances they can be a testament to courage. But in other cases (Novak), they can be spinless douche-baggery.