NYT reports "dark, bitter mood" at CIA, "sense of being besieged"

[DeepModem Mom]

THE AGENCY
Empty Office Adds to Sense of Isolation at the C.I.A.
By DOUGLAS JEHL

Published: July 13, 2004


WASHINGTON, July 12 - The spacious seventh-floor office of the director of central intelligence sat vacant in northern Virginia on Monday, leaving officials of the Central Intelligence Agency to ponder its future in a very new era.

As planned, George J. Tenet stepped down over the weekend, making Monday the first day in seven years that he had not presided over American intelligence agencies. In his place, John E. McLaughlin, the new acting chief, took Mr. Tenet's place at the early morning Oval Office briefing for President Bush, intelligence officials said.

But after last week's Senate report, which lambasted the C.I.A. in particular for misjudgments related to prewar intelligence on Iraq, the mood at the agency has turned dark and bitter, current and former officials said in telephone conversations on Monday. Many said they were waiting for the next shoe to drop.

On a wooded campus surrounded by high-security fences, the C.I.A. headquarters has always been geographically isolated from the rest of government. Its empty hallways and closed doors reinforce that isolation, as does its nominal mission: to provide independent, unbiased information in a political, policy-driven town....

***

On Monday, that environment only seemed to have compounded what one official described as a sense of being besieged....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/13/politics/13agen.html

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. The only way to win.... is not to play

On Monday, that environment only seemed to have compounded what one official described as a sense of being besieged....

Coming from the film... War Games... it seems that anyone who has anything to do with these types "GOP" is destined to lose one way or another. The Iraqi government played with these guys... as have many others who have ended up on the short end of the stick. Many of the dissenters who have resigned have ended up on the short end of the stick with character assasination as their just reward. There is a saying... "they eat their own" and I see that it is not far from the truth.

[DeepModem Mom]

2. Do you think that the hopes of some here...

who thought these "types" had met their match by taking on, and scapegoating, the CIA have seen those hopes dashed? If there was/is a "war," has the CIA lost it? Will Bush's naming of a new CIA head finalize things?

[HysteryDiagnosis]

3. Will Bush's naming of a new CIA

head finalize things?<<

Nope. I think you are going to see a backlash against these jokers that will make Whitewater look like a babbling brook.... especially when they get kicked out of office (they shoulda been impeached) in a few months. There is a saying... "You scapegoat the CIA at great personal risk"... we are going to find out just how great this risk actually is soon hopefully... rather than later. Come on Tenet... get that book started.... it will fit in nicely with all the rest that have come out in the last two years.

[Warpy]

4. This is just more evidence of a massive power struggle

between the CIA and the Pentagon's own intelligence offices. Remember, every scap of information the CIA had on terra and Iraq were filtered through first Tenet and then through the Pentagon and the OSP.

Personally, I'd like to see coverage start to focus on the Pentagon. All this stuff damneing the CIA is just a smoke screen to obscure the fact that the Pentagon's intelligence offices have now lied us into a second disastrous war that should never have been fought. The first was Vietnam.

Once might have been a mistake. Twise is the beginning of a very bad habit.