Politicising the CIA

[CHIMO]

"Well, the intent by the White House, which is orchestrating all this - CIA Chief Porter Goss is just an instrument of the White House - is what I call the three 'Ms': many malleable managers. In other words, if you wanted to politicise an intelligence agency, the way to do that is to put a politician in charge and then give him many malleable managers to do his bidding and to do the White House's bidding."

"And so, what you have here is the thorough politicisation of an intelligence agency which renders it no longer able to tell truth to power, to tell it like it is so to speak. And it's a very dangerous situation because, for example, where is the president to go now for an unvarnished and unpoliticised view on what should be done in Iraq? Will he have anyone to tell him the truth?"

"Now, the White House will be able to depend on the CIA to do the same thing, because the kinds of people that Porter Goss is bringing in are not professional. They are politicians, and so they will - as we say in the profession - 'cook intelligence' to the recipe of high policy. And when that happens, the nation is in real danger."

"Well, you know numbers mean nothing in the intelligence profession. Professionalism means everything. Integrity means everything. Character counts. What you need in high positions at the Central Intelligence Agency are people with integrity, people who come in and realise that their function is to tell the president when he has no clothes on, if that's the case."

http://www2.rnw.nl/rnw/en/currentaffairs/region/northamerica/us041129

[Zuni]

1. This is so dangerous I can't even think about it

The idea that the CIA is being shaped into a GOP political tool instead of a national intelligence agency is so scary.

Before I always pooh-poohed the idea that Bush wanted to install a dictatorship, but this really looks like that.
This might be the beginning of the end.

[izzie]

2. This is one of those things where the President----

cuts off his own legs and then wonders what went wrong. Really stupid move on his part. We and the world already see what happen in Iraq when he did not know or care what was going on. Other Empires have gone down on such things.Or it helped.