High time… I just hope they get rid of the leakers. These guys are supposed to be able to keep a secret. That is part ot their job, instead they are acting like a bunch of chatty cathies who are too busy trying to rat out the president to be bothered with these silly terrorists.

Say what you will about him, if you have read any of his books like Diplomacy or his White House memoirs, one can see he has a detailed understanding of the bureaucratic workings of the intelligence agencies, how they relate to, and at times conflict with, the policy goals set by an elected administration.

All in all I view it as a lost opportunity as I think you would have seen a very detailed nuts-and-bolts recommendations for intelligence and FBI reform come out of his committee, instead of the broad top-down move the deck chairs around recommendations we got.

State has long been the domain of Eastern establishment internationalists. It seems to identify more with the internationlist community than with the American public. The problem goes back decades.

There are similar problems in Langley. The agency works with foreign intelligence agencies, just as State diplomats spend a lot of time with foreign diplomats. Groupthink takes over and the people representing our interests with foreign powers begin to identify more with those foreign powers than with us.

Not unlike the “Court Jews” in monarchial Europe. The Jewish communities would need liaisons with Gentile authorities, fluent in the language and culture of the Gentiles. Unfortunately, people who are fluent in the language and culture of another group often identify more with that group than with their group of origin. Sort of like anthropologists going native. Probably more groupthink at work here as well.

A decade later the havoc wrought by the leader of the Reactionary Party for Appeasement, Apology, and International Kleptocracy (aka The Democrat Party) needs to be cleaned up and the sick agencies they stuffed full of their partisan vipers cleaned out while we all pay the price of their seditious perfidy. Good grief how I loathe the Democratic Party.

I’ll just offer my condolences to y’all here at Roger’s Place who have only begun to see the light. You belonged to the Dem party for the real and imagined benefits they once brought to the political system of the United States, but they are now corrupt and reactionary obstructionists. The times are far too dangerous to tolerate them any longer. The marginalization of the Dems needs to be done faster, please.

What we’re seeing right now is another version of the Casey memo, and Goss is right on track to clear anyone who’s not on the program.

My immediate boss, who is a former CIA guy, said recently that 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. Looks like some folks are going to making some retirement plans a little early.

All kidding aside, this is a step in the right direction. First, the CIA, then the State Department (one can dream).

What is new of course is the suggestion that changes are being made. I’m a bit puzzled that the operations directorate is getting all the ink. Not that I have any way to judge the need for change there (Bob Baer’s book rather suggests a huge problem, true) — but the more visible problems with politicization and quality have been on the intelligence or analytical side. The “Anonymous” affair was an egregious irregularity without precedent that I’m aware of. The endless sniping on policy matters has been surprising from the start, even more surprising has been that it goes on and on with no evidence that there are consequences.

As troubling as the procedural questions of apolitical discipline by career employees have been the insights into the agency’s substantive grasp of issues provided by the leaks. The leaks have, in general, reflected a rather clueless bunch of analysts. My favorite (and this was a joint State INR/CIA “leak”, even better) was the hilariously silly “warning” some time after the toppling of Saddam that the coalition had a finite time in which to make everyone happy, after which even the Shi’a would turn on their liberators. Of course the reality was the Shi’a, if anything, turned on those of their own who found IRGC and VEVAK money sufficient motivation to launch their clumsy and futile “rebellion” under Sadr’s banner. If this reflected the quality of analysis on important topics, right there was a scandal all by itself.

The agency has vast responsibilities and there’s no reason to think that most of them aren’t discharged competently. But judging only by intermittent exposure to their analytical products and personnel over the last 20 years, I have found myself far from uniformly impressed. The famous “leaks” over the last two years have, if anything, made them look pretty stupid.

Just to muddy the waters, let me assert that the “failures” WRT to Iraqi WMD were by no means a sign of incompetence or structural problems. The Senate report on this is thoroughly unpersuasive. The only mistake in that arena was the unwillingness of the recently departed director to grasp the nettle of educating the public and helping move the debate onto adult ground, where the insurmountable limits to the clarity of our intelligence are recognized as driving the pre-emption option, not foreclosing it.

I’m not sure how you “clean house” in such a way that common sense is infused into your employees — normal non-political behavior, of course, is another thing. The 9/11 Commission structural “fixes” represented the opposite of dealing with the problem.