14 Comments

1. David Thomson:

ìOf course. I mean, they all came from Yale, which didn’t exactly preach Social Darwinism.î

Thatís also what Iíve been saying. Itís a common sense attitude to take for granted that a liberal arts graduate of Yale, Harvard, or the other ìeliteî universities is a jerk until proven otherwise. These schools do not primarily teach their students how to think and follow a logical argument. No, they groom them to be liberals and flunkies of the Democrat Party. Arenít there a number of exceptions? Of course, that’s why this is only a general rule.

Nov 16, 2004 - 6:40 am 2. Bravo Romeo Delta:

There is an entire industry built around intentional leaks. It’s like this, if the CIA issues a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on some matter, then it creates a specific set of reactions, as it becomes the Official Voice of the US Gov’t (OVUSG). But, if for whatever reason, there is a desire to make information available as open source material to feed it to think tanks, scholars, and other elements of the policy community without using the OVUSG, then it’s usually done as a leak.

As an open source researcher, one uses something like Nexis to find a given story. From there, start tracking similar verbiage to see which newspaper or wire service picked up the story first. From reading of that news item, you can usually deduce which government is making its non-official statment. And based on readings of news events in the two or three weeks leading up to it, one can make wild guesses as to the reasoning behind using the non-official voice to put information in play.

Nov 16, 2004 - 7:49 am 3. Lola:

And what are your guesses, Bravo Romeo Delta?

Nov 16, 2004 - 8:10 am 4. Stan:

In this “up is down” world this article took a refreshing approach to labels:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/198891_youngs10.html

In the CIA, Goss is the reformer, “progressive” and the bureaucracy is the status quo / “consesrvative”.

As regards the purge of “liberal democrats” – if there is a request for declaration of how one votes – then this will induce groupthink and weaken the agency. On the other hand if the question is posed in terms of “do you feel primary allegience to your personal views as opposed to the rules and workings of the Agency and as such you have a personal veto over all the Agency’s rules of secrecy and confidentiality if you feel like it” then let the axe fall as appropriate.

To the extent a clandestine Agency is filled with operatives that believe their view trumps the operations of the Agency is no longer clandestine and cannot function.

Stanley

Nov 16, 2004 - 10:43 am 5. Bravo Romeo Delta:

Well, these are completely wild guesses, so don’t place any stock in them. First of all, I’ve not been following a lot of this very closely (so I’m not intimately familiar with the timelines and events). Secondly, this kind of thing doesn’t necessarily follow the “rules” that these sorts of things generally do. Third, I’m not going to go back and do the unpacking and pecking through data to reach a stronger conclusion. So, this isn’t quite tinfoil-hat territory, only because it’s not picked up enough momentum to truly be a conspiracy theory. I invite any and all readers to “fact-check my a$$” and debunk any obvious errors in logic.

So, that said, official unofficial leakage is customarily done by an agency about some other national threat – e.g. the Spanish intel agency leaking to El Pais about the Algerican nuclear program. This business of leaking about your own stuff is quite rare, and far as I know, never done with the approval of the powers that be.

Now, you’ll note the info about getting the Uranium from Niger came to us from Britain. The way that a lot of intelligence is handled between various national agencies, is that Country A might pass information along to Country B, if and only if, Country B doesn’t pass it along any further. So my guess is that France got info about Iraqi uranium purchases from folks in the former French colony of Niger. This info, along with collection information validating the info itself, was presented to the British. The British, either based on this bit of data, or other bits of data, told the US that Iraq was trying to get Uranium from Niger. At some point, either a forged document was passed (either knowingly or unknowingly) from France to the UK and then the US, or the UK and/or US got the document independently. At this point, then the UK had some incontrovertible evidence (that they couldn’t share with the US) that Iraq was buying in Niger, and this assertion was backed by what later turned out to be a phony document. Fake, but accurate, if you will.

Meanwhile, Joe Plame was sent to drink tea in Niger, and found some evidence that may have supported this notion of Iraqi purchases.

He came back, and then went on the media circuit (which, particularly when it comes to writing something, usually requires approval from the CIA, regardless of whether one is still working for them). In theory, he wouldn’t have gotten cleared quickly enough to publish when he did, unless one of a couple things happened. One, his book was so at odds with his actual reports that there was no chance his books would reveal useful information. Two, that he went on the payroll of some organization other than the CIA (which makes a certain amount of sense, because, IIRC, he’s not in the Directorate of Operations, the same way his wife is). Or three, someone in the approval process dropped the ball and needs a beating. Hayes seems to support the theory that the slide was permitted, so long as the book was a hatchet job.

So, at any rate, the 16 words thing blows up. Joe Plame who may or may not have been under the strictures of the CIA’s regulations at the time, went on the media circuit to add fuel to the fire.

At this point, the mechanics start getting murky. When you have a supposedly ‘outed’ Directorate of Operation sort appearing on a magazine cover, even with sunglasses and scarf, you have to wonder. Then you not only have the outing of Val Plame, which is another entirely different issue, but beyond that, you have the CIA siccing the DOJ on the WH. Odd bloody behavior, even for beltway beauracratic death matches.

Anywho, another bit of grist for the mill, is that generally, the CIA has a reputation for being culturally left-wing (with some exceptions) while other agencies, such as the Defense Intelligence Agency, trend right. That could be a product of any one of a number of things, but that’s way beyond the scope of this reply.

Nov 16, 2004 - 10:49 am 6. Lola:

Now, why would CIA be left-wing? That I can’t understand. I just kinda had the belief that right-wing would tend to be supportive of spy agencies and such.

Nov 16, 2004 - 11:02 am 7. Bravo Romeo Delta:

You got to remember a couple of background things.

The CIA were the folks running around with the exploding cigars trying to do Castro in, a pet project of President Kennedy.

Secondly, a lot of the folks who are right-leaning may tend to be more pro-military and are often drawn to the DoD intelligence outfits.

Third, after the Church commission, a lot of the cowboy sorts were weeded out, leaving more of bureacrats than hotshots. In particular, the metric used to measure the effectiveness of field guys started changing (as did much or the rest of the culture) and it started becoming conservative in a don’t-rock-the-boat way, versus a conservative kill-commies kind of way.

Fourth, there is a general tendency of those who are successful in government to have faith in the effectiveness of government, which again trends somewhat to the left.

These are four factors which may individually contribute, but maybe another way to think about it is the pairing of State and CIA against DoD and it’s intel outfits. It’s relatively easy to see how DoD aligned folks would trend right, so by a similarly vague notion, we might see why State and CIA trend left (although State is much further to the left than the CIA).

Finally, when asking about the right being more “pro-spy”, remember that there are something like 13 different intelligence agencies in the government, of which the CIA, despite its size, is only one.

Nov 16, 2004 - 11:10 am 8. jerry:

BRD:

It is a common misconception that Plame was in the DO. She is not. She was in the DI at the time Wilson went to Niger and as far as I know she still is. The issue seems to be that she traveled under “official cover” in the past. That doesn’t make her DO. Almost all CIA foreign travel is done under official cover. I have never had it confirmed either through official or reliable open source that she wss ever a case officer.

Nov 16, 2004 - 11:27 am 9. Charlie (Colorado):

Thanks, jerry — I was going to mention that if you hadn’t.

In response to a couple of questions, at least in theory neither “Anonymous” nor the Langley Leakers can publish anything without prior approval, and the penalties are both civil and criminal: termination, forfeiture of pay, benefits, and any royalties, and time in the hoosegow.

We can, therefore, presume that at least the guys who are openly known now (eg, “Anonymous”) published with the approval of someone at the Deputy Director level.

Last I heard the DDO was gone, and his deputy. Anyone heard anything about the DDI?

Nov 16, 2004 - 4:23 pm 10. PeterUK:

As a foreigner,I find it somewhat dispiriting to find that “THe Men in Black” are actually “The Men in Beige” and the “Heart of Darkness” is an encounter group and job creation scheme.I was wondering why the bad guys weren’t dropping like flies from fatal turban winding accidents and the like.

Nov 16, 2004 - 4:33 pm 11. Charlie (Colorado):

Peter, I’ll tell you something I learned when I was “in the Community”. I mostly worked with NSA folks, and in general I’d say about one of them in twenty is really quite sharp and quite effective.

Then I worked with CIA, and discovered that the reason the proportion of effectives at NSA is as high as 1 in 20 is because if the CIA catches you being useful and effective, they transfer you.

Nov 16, 2004 - 4:59 pm 12. Alec Rawls:

A big part of the problem of how to deal with a rogue CIA (and State Dept.) is the civil service laws, which contravene the fundamental principle of voter sovereignty: that the voters are supposed to be able to throw the bums out. Civil service laws only allow us (through our elected executive office holders) to throw out a tiny fraction of the bums. The principle of voter sovereignty is actually ensconsed in the Constitution, in the guarantee to the states that they shall have a republican form of govt. For a discussion of this guarantee, and how it might be brought into play, click on my link.

Nov 16, 2004 - 5:44 pm 13. Cybrludite:

Roger,

Your “editor” could use a bit of spell checking… ;-D

Nov 16, 2004 - 6:09 pm 14. Kevin P:

Roger:

The CIA has been so fat and lazy for so many years that a clean up and some outraged resignations is exactly what the agency needs. The political infighting and the CYA mentality has so saturated Langley that even if Goss is tossed out after a year or two he will have done a great service to this country by getting rid of some of the desk hugging lardbutts that are more concerned with swapping gossip at Georgetown cocktail parties then protecting this country. The press was calling for heads to roll after 9-11 and now that some of their best “unnamed” sources are leaving they are pissed that they will have to do real reporting instead of being mouthpieces for beaurocratic backstabbing.

Nov 16, 2004 - 7:23 pm

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