You said: ” I can assure you that there were as many Kerry voters in the CIA as there were Bush voters in the Black community. ”

Well your assurances are not very reassuring. The only thing lacking at Langley was a 20 foot high Kerry-Edwards sign on the front lawn of the Old Headquarters Building. The CIA leadership was making plans to send off Porter Goss on the 3 of November after a Kerry victory. Everbody in the building, the Pentagon and the Defense agencies was well aware of it. So was the President and Porter Goss.

This is my first post since I came back from Omaha, Colorado Springs and Hawaii.

Yeah, Richard, but on what basis?

I am not sure that I understand what you mean. All I was trying to indicate is that most of the people I deal with have previously served in the military and they are decidedly not Democrats.

This is getting interesting.

Yeah, Richard, but on what basis?

Now we can add the CIA to the list of entities that Bush has either destroyed, discredited, or majorly shaken up (in no special order):

Old Europe

The U.N.

The Democratic Party

Sadaam and the Baathists in Iraq

al-Qaeda

Libya’s WMD program

Khan’s network

Afghanistan’s Taliban

Old Media

Israeli/Palestinian dynamics

Arafat (may he rest in pieces)

The Defense Dept.

Hollywood

The Education establishment

NAACP

Judicial Activism

and he’s not finished yet!!

So much to write, so little time …

Richard doesn’t mention it but it appears that this is (at this moment) an operations battle. Operations is the collection side of the CIA. Its failures can be laid, to a great extent, upon the rules imposed by the legislature (vide, Torricelli, Leahy, other scum), those rules require that we have an affidavit from a potential agents choir director prior to employing them. Given that we are interested in penetrating dictators organizations, those choir director affidavits are in short supply. Hence, no HUMINT resources in Iraq. The proble is that it has been so long since operations actually operated that those currently running the show are clueless. They run like little bunnies to the Justice Department to get every i dotted and t crossed prior to going to the men’s room. Goss is an operations man from the time when the CIA actually conducted operations. The fellows he brought with him are engaged in the necessary housecleaning required so that actual operations can be conducted. The sniveling whiners stomping their little feet about the big meanie really need to find other employment. The CIA operations side has become an adjunct of State and is much happier sipping tea than gathering the raw intelligence required for the analytical side’s work.

I think Goss is off to a fine start and I hope that we see a hundred resignations within the next month. The US will be healthier for them.

Partisanhsip can make intelligent people do some really stupid stuff and I think that when those buildings feel on 911 the CIA went into CYA mode and decided the best defence is a good offence.

They screwed up and they know it and the more demands Bush makes on their abilities the more glaring their deficiencies are. Inertia is the problem. They need some shaking up.

It would be nice if we could take politics out of the intelligence agencies, but unfortunately, that is not going to happen. Even if we could ban Democrats (just kidding), the problem is more with high-level individuals who are upset that they were not listened to or were passed over for a promotion. The MSM is happy to give these disgruntled employees a forum for attacking the administration.