Cooking With Goss (Kaplan/Slate)

[struggle4progress]

The new CIA chief's shakeups are bad news.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2004, at 2:42 PM PT

<snip> The personnel shufflings haven't yet spread to the analytical shop. But signs are starting to point to a broad shake-up, charged by political motivations. And it's in this context that Goss' actions take on a darker tint.

Today's New York Times, in a story headlined "New C.I.A. Chief Tells Workers to Back Administration Policies," reports on a leaked memo that Goss circulated on Monday within the CIA "to clarify beyond doubt the rules of the road," as the new director put it. The pertinent passage is this: "As agency employees we do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies."

This directive reinforces a general uneasiness about Goss, who after all auditioned for his current job by doing political hackwork for the president. In June 2003, when Sen. Kerry—who was clearly running for president already—gave "a major speech" on national-security issues, the Bush-Cheney campaign tapped Goss to write the official critique. And he wrote a blazer, denouncing the speech as "political 'me-tooism' " and complaining that Kerry "neglected the president's historic achievements" and "remarkable progress" at combating terrorism.

Goss also helped Bush during the early days of the Joseph Wilson-Valerie Plame scandal. As chairman of a Senate oversight committee and as a former CIA case officer himself, Goss should have been dismayed that a White House aide might have exposed the identity of an undercover agent as an act of political retaliation against the agent's spouse. But, although the Justice Department took the reports seriously enough to mount a grand-jury probe, Goss dismissed them as "wild and unsubstantiated" and added, as a jab at the Democrats, "Somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA, I'll have an investigation." <snip>

http://slate.msn.com/id/2109870/

[SEF]

1. Can he be slowed down ?

To what extent can the executive branch really be held accountable for partisan pandering?

There is very little protection included in the way that branch works which would keep someone, for instance, from firing all people who were avowed liberals.

Anyone know any protections that would assist in combating this sort of political job stuffing on a monumental scale ?

[newyawker99]

2. Hi SEF!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast: