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Bush's Night of the Long Knives

19:54 / 14.11.04

From this Newsday Article: WASHINGTON -- The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources.

"The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda."

There's already been conflicts and shakedowns in the CIA this week resulting in early retirement decisions by two major figures within the agency. And now this?

No surprise that the people who fabricated or helped 'enhance' intelligence for the Iraq war aren't being reprimanded. They're being promoted.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

20:44 / 14.11.04

Oh, mother. The CIA is looked on as a hotbed of liberals? Am I alone in thinking that's about the most fucked-up thing I've heard all day?

Welcome to Bizarro World...

unheimlich manoeuvre

23:41 / 14.11.04

Telegraph 15/11/2004
Spies rise up against CIA chief

The CIA was in turmoil last night as supporters and critics of its new director fought a bitter and very public war of words over his efforts to overhaul America's main intelligence service.

Independent 14 November 2004

The deputy head of the CIA has resigned after a series of confrontations between senior officials and the chief of staff of the agency's newly appointed head.

...

Definitely a power struggle. I thought George Bush Senior was once Head of the CIA?

10:09 / 15.11.04

Good idea. The CIA were "off message" on Iraq, so Cheney had to go in with his own stooges and re-cook the intelligence until it tasted better. In the future, the Bush White House will need intelligence data that better fit their worldview.

12:06 / 15.11.04

I protested the CIA's recruitment on campus in the 1980s because of their role in all those covert operations in Latin America. So it feels really weird to be feeling a little sympathetic to it in these strange days... That sucking sound you hear in the background is the political center of this country being pulled even further to the right.

15:19 / 15.11.04

kind of reminds me of how hitler stopped listening to generals and started listening to astrologers and psychics.

16:10 / 15.11.04

Bush pater was indeed CIA chief, and I suspect (without any evidence at all) this is why the CIA didn't hit Bush fils as hard as they could've after the Plame affair.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

16:54 / 15.11.04

Loved the description of this on William Gibson's blog...

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the undefended border between fiction and reality, the White House hands John LeCarre the plot-device he's wanted since the day the Berlin Wall fell.

18:15 / 15.11.04

From flufeemunk:

My dad works for the CIA. He's your standard suburban neocon (so his job is safe) but he tells me that there have been mass retirements in the past few months. The same is seeming to apply to the State Department. All in all, a bit of bad juju going around the place. Funny thing is, I doubt this will help the CIA at all. They have been rather short of help lately and will hire anyone with a clearance. I think they are probably weakening the CIA so they an get away with consolidating it under the Department of Homeland Security...

20:10 / 16.11.04

On the other hand, the Bush supporters say the same thing happened in 1994 for Clinton's 2nd term.

So there's that.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

07:38 / 17.11.04

[off topic]

[Sigh]. I like Gibson's blog, but the le Carre thing is a pretty sad gag. There are nineteen le Carre novels so far, of which eight are unequivocally not Cold War-based, two are set during the Cold War but aren't really much to do with spying (a detective story and a love story) and three are transition novels from the end of the eighties and the early nineties which are, as it were, close-of-Cold-War novels.

Oh, and the joke about a new plot was made in 1995 by cartoonist Jeff Danziger after the Ames affair.

Sorry, I just hate casual recycled humour. I'd be the same if someone said Gibson only ever wrote about computers.

[/off topic]

Back in the topic -

here's a choice snippet:

The style of Directorate of Intelligence papers was altered in such a way as to alter the content, as well

Downing Street dossier, anyone?

I think this issue with the Bush Whitehouse will be one of degree; it's been the case in a number of areas so far that this administration does what others do within limits and just does it to the max, a polarisation which unnerves even hard-edged regular Republicans and therefore - when you consider what those hard-edged Republicans consider normal - ought to scare the pants off those of us who lean left of George Snr.

12:59 / 17.11.04

A bit of unintentional irony last night probably not missed by the programmers of Dutch TV. They aired the Tom Clancy / Harrison Ford movie "Clear and Present Danger." Despite the ideology, it's pretty entertaining. It's how the Right likes to think it conducted the War On Drugs down south in the '80s and '90s.

To make a long story short, Jack Ryan (Ford) the CIA guy has a run-in with the President and his National Security Advisor over a stupid plan that goes tits-up. When the NS Adv.'s weaselly assistant fails to get Ryan killed, the President sleazily tries to get Ryan to "play the game." Ryan doesn't and the movie ends with him entering a Congressional hearing, where he will presumably rip the Prez and NS. Adv. a new one.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!!

14:14 / 17.11.04

According to The NY TIMES today,

New C.I.A. Chief Tells Workers to Back Administration
Policies
By DOUGLAS JEHL
Porter J. Goss has told C.I.A. employees that their job is
to "support the administration and its policies in our
work."

Quoted from a memo from the new head of the CIA. While yes he also said their job was to be "objective" in their presentation of data, the article asserts that

'Tensions between the agency's new leadership team, which took over in late September, and senior career officials are more intense than at any time since the late 1970's. The most significant changes so far have been the resignations on Monday of Stephen R. Kappes, the deputy director of operations, and his deputy, Michael Sulick, but Mr. Goss told agency employees in the memorandum that he planned further changes "in the days and weeks ahead of us'' that would involve "procedures, organization, senior personnel and areas of focus for our action.'''

I'm a little scared. It does seem like this goes beyond just the normal changing of the guard that often occurs between terms to something more sinister. I am trying to look at this without a conspiracy mindset. But it seems like this democrat is putting it as mildly as it can be put:

"It's just very hard to divine what's going on over there,'' said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, who said he and other members of the Senate intelligence committee would be seeking answers at closed sessions this week. "But on issue after issue, there's a real question about whether the country and the Congress are going to get an unvarnished picture of our intelligence situation at a critical time.''

06:44 / 18.11.04

I think Sen. Wydens response is more apropos. The changes won't make the CIA more scary, but less useful. If they try to (let's say) knock over Venezuela, their intelligence will be less than accurate and the Venezuelans will be prepared.

unheimlich manoeuvre

15:56 / 26.11.04

November 26, 2004 The Guardian

Two more top spies quit troubled CIA

"Two more of America's top spies were reported yesterday to be leaving the CIA, as an attempt to fix the troubled agency appeared increasingly to be dividing its ranks and driving out its most experienced officials."

...

How many senior staff can they do without?

19:49 / 26.11.04

As many as they want, unfortunately.