Dana Priest On Crack

The Fix-It Man Leaves, but The Agency's Cracks Remain by Dana Priest at the Washington Post has some significant cracks in it as well. It's listed as analysis, but reads more like a transcription of CIA malcontents. See if you can put this puzzle together.

Porter J. Goss was brought into the CIA to quell what the White House viewed as a partisan insurgency against the administration and to re-energize a spy service that failed to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks or accurately assess Iraq's weapons capability.

It appears as though Priest is knee deep in the political element of this issue, so deep she doesn't see the forest for the trees in her analysis.

"Now there's a decline in morale, its capability has not been optimized and there's a hemorrhaging of very good officers," Brennan said.

Pardon me for pointing it out, but shouldn't there have been a decline in morale a long, long time ago, given that, as Priest points out in the same article, the CIA embarrassed itself in and around 9/11 and Iraq. And let's not simply dump it all on Bush out of habit. The fact is the CIA hasn't been getting rave reviews for over two decades. After all, 9/11 wasn't exactly the first time the World Trade Centers were attacked, now was it?

What it looks like is that Priest's sources are mostly aligned with elements within the CIA Goss went there to shake up, or out. But now we are supposed to simply slam Goss, who obviously had some faults, because some hand wringing malcontents with at least some acknowledged history for not getting the job done are upset? That makes no sense, unless of course, it's only their lens through which you are able to envision the CIA. And I can't comprehend the following as analysis at all.

As important, Goss -- who did not like to travel overseas or to wine and dine foreign intelligence chiefs who visited Washington -- allowed the atrophy of relations with the foreign intelligence services that helped the CIA kill or catch nearly all the terrorists taken off the streets since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, in the view of these officials and several foreign intelligence officials.

Foreign intelligence heads, who used to spend hours with Goss's predecessor, George J. Tenet, discussing strategy and tactics, are now more likely to meet with the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, whose position was created in the overhaul of U.S. intelligence agencies.

One senior European counterterrorism official, asked recently for his assessment of Goss's leadership, responded by saying, "Who?"

Well, that's an impressive shot at Goss for an objective journalist, unfortunately, it also  makes no sense. The way I read it is, as many already know, Negroponte is taking the lead with his new post, so why is it a fault of Goss if he isn't wining and dining foreign intelligence officials while Negroponte is? Might it simply be it was no longer his job and because Priest's primary sources are still of an old mindset as regards the CIA they simply don't like it? Makes sense to me. And it makes more sense than both Negroponte and Goss performing the same role, which Priest all but advocates with her obvious slant.

And I can't resist reaching back for another old quote to juxtapose with this quote in Priest's latest:

the atrophy of relations with the foreign intelligence services that helped the CIA kill or catch nearly all the terrorists taken off the streets since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, in the view of these officials and several foreign intelligence officials

Now, from a Priest story in 2002:

In a speech on Dec. 11, CIA director George J. Tenet said that interrogations overseas have yielded significant returns recently. He calculated that worldwide efforts to capture or kill terrorists had eliminated about one-third of the al Qaeda leadership. "Almost half of our successes against senior al Qaeda members has come in recent months," he said.

Many of these successes have come as a result of information gained during interrogations. The capture of al Qaeda leaders Ramzi Binalshibh in Pakistan, Omar al-Faruq in Indonesia, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in Kuwait and Muhammad al Darbi in Yemen were all partly the result of information gained during interrogations, according to U.S. intelligence and national security officials. All four remain under CIA control.

That above is from the early version of Priest's Pulitzer Prize winning piece on the not so secret by then secret prisons she wrote on in 2005. So, Goss is to blame for a lack of International cooperation - not the systematic leaks Priest has been using as her bread and butter all along? Sorry, I don't think so. It's already been reported that foreign intelligence agencies are leery of America in part because the CIA has been leaking like a sieve.

On top of that, Priest attempts to discredit Goss for an alleged role in weakening the CIA, yet she herself may well be the greatest offender in that regard due to her unwillingness to resist publishing classified information under her byline to make herself some sort of star - to Democrats, anyway.

Why am I thinking that Negroponte, and now General Hayden, have a better chance of patching up the cracks in our intelligence services, than does anyone have of getting Priest to acknowledge the significant cracks in her latest story.

Some at the CIA are obviously upset that the hub of our Intelligence services has moved outside of them to some degree. They'll just have to get use to it. I'm sure Priest can buy them a beer or two and try to cheer them up. Heck, the WaPo will probably even pick up the tab.

Comments

[Dan]

The decline in the morale of that government agency began the moment it was apparent that Al Gore had lost Florida, and lost the election. From that moment on, "morale" became an issue. Their morale took a further hit when it became apparent later, that John Francois Kerry lost Ohio, and thus lost in '04. The only question remaining was whether their sense of grief and chagrin exceeded that of Tereza Heinz Kerry. It was probably a toss up. And rest assured, morale also became an issue over at the EPA, the Interior Agency, you get the gist. The establishment in D.C., is Democrat, and their war against Bush and his administration began during the transition, and hasn't ceased for one moment, not even in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

The problem is that GW, the President, Commander in Chief, leader of the GOP, didn't get that, and hasn't gotten it, to this very day.

He is still pushing his "new tone," when anybody else would have properly ditched it years ago.

[> ~ iwabwu ~ <]

I don't know how there can be any kind of sense of security with 'leaky sieves', it wouldn't matter who is in office. Democrats or Republicans. One would think the security of the people of a nation would transcend tenure in office. What is the point of any kind of national security? Do either of these political parties or their leaders have the people of this nation in mind? What's in it for them?

[@@ ~~~ iwabwu ~~~ @@]

Reminds me of a line from a song ~ If you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything.

[dnichols]

I agree that GW does not understand the cut throats in D.C., and especially at the CIA. I hope someone flushes out the scum- I am afraid the damage to this administration is deep, and it would take an agressive rehabilitation to repair at this stage of the game.