Salon: The White House War With the CIA

[kskiska]

Author Thomas Powers, an expert on U.S. spy agencies, wonders who will take the rap for 9/11 and the "horrific, calamitous" mistake in Iraq.

While the nation's attention is focused on the slow-motion deterioration of Iraq, the White House for months has been at war on the home front -- clashing repeatedly with the CIA in a rare series of public disagreements. They've fought over intelligence that seemed to predict the 9/11 terrorist attacks. They've fought over whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. They've fought over a seemingly vindictive White House leak that identified an undercover CIA agent.

According to Thomas Powers, a widely respected authority on the nation's spy business, that conflict has put the CIA -- and U.S. national security -- in peril.

"I think the agency is in terrible shape because of this," Powers told Salon in an interview. "It appears now that the CIA is actually incapable of operating in a hostile environment. It's afraid."

Powers is the author of "Intelligence Wars: American Secret History From Hitler to Al Qaeda." He says that the CIA, facing a demoralized rank and file and a lack of resources, is being effectively hamstrung by the Bush administration and compromised in its job of protecting national security. A big part of the danger is that U.S. intelligence, in the hands of an administration that views foreign policy through its own self-serving lens, has lost not just its autonomy, but essential assets. With the administration's focus shifting to the invasion earlier this year, crucial intelligence resources needed to battle al-Qaida around the globe -- as well as those now needed to secure and stabilize Iraq -- have been squandered. "We have practically nobody who can speak the language ," Powers says. "We're running the country with teenagers carrying machine guns."

(snip)

"This is more manufactured, more deliberate and more coldblooded. And it was done in plain sight. The whole world was watching and saying, 'No!'" he says. "My own feeling is we've embarked on a horrific, calamitous mistake in Iraq. We're already in a situation we have very little control over and very little ability to get out of, without leaving everything much worse off."

more…
http://salon.com/news/feature/2003/11/08/powers/index.html

[ant]

1. I felt scared for the first time last night

"My own feeling is we've embarked on a horrific, calamitous mistake in Iraq. We're already in a situation we have very little control over and very little ability to get out of, without leaving everything much worse off."

For a while now I've been thinking this'll all turn out OK. It'll be hard, it'll be long, but eventually, somehow, Iraq will turn out OK. The right people will eventually step in to do the right thing, etc.

Last night, over a couple of beers with my DC friends - we're all young and work in int'l affairs and like to think we'll one day run the world - a friend of mine at a big non-profit started telling me about how pessimistic the higher ups in her office are. No one thinks there's a solution here, and these are left-leaning, very well connected people who have spent their lives coming up with solutions.

The irony is that a big casualty of this war for me has been my rather lefty belief that powerful nations can do something to help/save the oppressed. Despite my opposition to this war, despite the loss of innocent life, I clung to that silver lining of Saddam being gone and the people of Iraq having a chance. I'm learning now that the kind of chance they need is the kind of chance people can only give themselves. People need to storm their own government palaces and tear down their own walls and rebuild their own governments in order for true freedom and democracy to flourish.

This is NOT an argument in favor of a US pullout. A power vacuum now will only bring back a new dictator, perhaps someone or some group worse than Saddam. I believe it would be morally if not legally wrong for the US to do that. While I don't know what the solution is here, my gut tells me that at this point it's a matter of preventing even more harm rather than actually doing any good. We're treading water, trying like hell to not drown. The option of swimming to shore doesn't even exist.

Fuck you, Bush.

/end rant

[kskiska]

2. Agree. Great rant.

This is scary stuff:

Yes, but we've almost never seen a mistake of this scale unfold in such vivid slow-motion. It's all there, right in front of us right now. We're walking around in that country with no idea what's going on around us. We can't understand any conversation, and we know so little. You may think I'm exaggerating -- and God willing I am. But I don't think so. We don't know who the enemy is, or who we're dealing with, and we can't talk to them. They could all be sitting in a room talking to each other right now about how to kill the Americans, and we would never know. I think an awful lot of that is going on over there as we speak.

[DBoon]

3. Does * really think he can pick a fight with the CIA

and win?

[wabeewoman]

4. I'm hoping he can't

but I'm not sure based on what I'm seeing coming out about the CIA. The whole world seems confused about how to stop the cascading effects of what this administration is doing. And if this is true, then how did we know which houses to bomb in Tekrit today??? Or did we just randomly bomb as a show of force? I feel like we have passed over an invisible line from sanity to insanity in our government.

[Bucky]

5. CIA is not all-powerful

Bush's record seems to be, so far, that he wins all the fights he picks. And the CIA simply isn't the all-powerful organization that conspiracy fans like to imagine. The Bushies "going to war" with the spy agency is a dangerous thing on a number of levels. Intergovernmental factionalism will lead to shut down lines of communication and could easily leave us more vulnerable to another terrorist attack.

Fortunately there's not a whole country full of pissed off orphans and widowers who just saw their families blown to bits by America over some lame, fake excuse for a war out there. Oh wait. Fuck.

[teryang]

6. The so called conflict with the CIA is myth

The agency serves the interests of the ruling elite. Like any good intelligence agency it has a public facade which is more or less morally acceptable. This is primarily represented by its analysis and reporting elements. These people often represent the best intellectual talent America has to offer.

On the other hand, the operative side of the CIA is interlaced with multi-talented ideological zealots and corrupt front organizations often bent on achieving domestic political missions which are morally and politically unacceptable. The nature and purposes of their game plans are so extreme and totally repugnant to American sensibilities that they are often beyond the pale of credulity. These activities must not be exposed at any cost. Therefore the agency has a schizophrenic nature.

The operators are allied with the current regime's objectives or at least they were. Perhaps there is a certain amount of ass covering or trail laying going on right now. The analysts see the regime's foreign policy for the obvious folly that it is and do not want to be the fall guys. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand has been doing in laying the groundwork for the Iraq war here at home. They don't want to know. Nobody does. While one side warns of the coming threat, the other side is out facilitating it. It is amazing the amount of compartmentalization that goes on in the intelligence community. Analysts are often the last to find out what the operators in their own organization have been up to. When and if such an epiphany occurs, it a real stomach churner. Dealing drugs, training and arming terrorists, toppling regimes, creating a phony cassus belli for war, this is their stock in trade.

The two faced nature of the agency is an important political asset.