What's Behind Hookergate? GOP Spy Ring Busted or Negroponte vs Neocons

[leveymg]

Either way, there's more, way more than hookers and Congressmen.

Two heavyweight bloggers have weighed in on what's behind the bust of the CIA connection to the MZM Contractor Scandal. The sudden departure of CIA Director Porter Goss and the nomination of Gen. Michael Hayden is seen by Steve Clemons at Washington Note as signifying John Negroponte's attempt to keep the CIA from falling entirely into the maw of Donald Rumsfeld's DOD intelligence empire. http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001382.php

Meanwhile, Robert Parry of Consortium News sees Goss as a casualty of the ongoing struggle between the White House neocons and Negroponte's brand of Cold War real politik. See, http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/050906.html

Which is it? Or, is there another explanation for what's going on beneith the surface? I have great respect for both Clemons and Parry, both of whom have been around a long time and understand how Washington works. But, I believe the Goss scandal and attempt to elevate Hayden in his place at CIA has more to do with the takeover of what's left of the independent intelligence community, and is tied in with a desperate struggle for survival by career CIA, FBI and DIA officers against the Bushbots. The MZM scandal is yet another battle that includes the Plame, Abramoff and OSP-AIPAC prosecutions. I can not agree that Hayden is one of the white hats, and he seems to me to be an integral part of BushCo's ongoing criminal endeavor to illegally seize total control over intelligence and the American political process.

On this subject, I posted the following this morning at Steve Clemons blog, Washington Note:

Steve -

As is normally the case with matters involving covert operations that become embarassingly public, there are at least three layers to the NSA and CIA spy scandals, all of which prominently feature General Michael Hayden in various roles.

These cover stories are meant to mask the offensive odor of political espionage being conducted by GOP-allied contractors who have been privatizing NSA and CIA operations during the past six years,which coincides with Gen. Hayden's watch at NSA and the tenure of the Bush Administration.

The outer layer of the onion is the lie repeated by Administration spokesmen to the public -- essentially a denial that the NSA is spying on anyone other than al-Qaeda's international communications. The second cover story is the one which is available through open sources to better-informed consumers, such as intelligence beat journalists, bloggers, and middle-level intelligence community personnel -- that acknowledges the obvious fact that, as the Robb-Silberman Commission termed it, a "gross failure" of intelligence system occurred related to pre-Iraq war intelligence, and that certain, limited number of private contractors and officials (MZM and the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center)were the source of massive and pervasive "errors".

The middle cover story has some sex appeal, a scandal involving hookers and Congressmen and a corrupt defense-intel contractor, and the sudden resignation of the CIA's Nos. 1 and 3. The gist of that middle cover story is best captured by an old inside pages story with a bland headline in The Washington Post, in this case by Walter Pincus, "Intelligence Center, Contractor MZM on Cozy Terms"; Sunday, July 17, 2005; Page A07; http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/20 ... which portrays Gen. Hayden leading an emergency inter-agency investigation and repair effort. Finally, we come to the heart of the matter.

The inescapable fact -- and this is the "inner-secret" -- is that Hayden has been in charge of the transformation of NSA from a government spy agency tasked with monitoring threats from foreign states that uses technology provided by the private sector into a publicly-funded, privately operated domestic spy conglomerate whose primary mission is to suck up every byte of electronic data produced by every U.S. citizen so that it can analyzed by private corporations using highly classified proprietary algorithms that nobody except their owners, who are virtually uniformly GOP supporters, understand and utilize. After all that has happened to NSA on his watch since 2000, we are now supposed to just simply trust him to be neutral and objective as he takes over and transforms the human intelligence side at CIA.

No.

There's more. Please see, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/5/7/93933/90072

[acmejack]

1. Great diary, Leveymg!

I mean bigtime, that is some seriously insightful analysis. I think you are spot on too...

[spindrifter]

2. This is outstanding analysis.

Okay, here is a question: If there is a battle line drawn between Rumsfailed and Negroponte, then what is * up to? He can easily rid himself of Negroponte. He might even get a fraction of a percentage point in the polls for that. He could also get rid of Rummy without losing any political capital. He could rid himself of both of them. Why are both involved in the struggle over dominating the intelligence arena? There must be another factor out there.

[hootinholler]

4. That caught my attention too...

Why would Negroponte and Rummy be duking it out?

-Hoot

[spindrifter]

5. I can understand why Rummy and J.N. would be

at each other's throats--but it seems like it would be so easy for * to either call them in and tell them to knock it off or to let one or both go. There are plenty of other bad apples out there.

[KoKo]

3. Glad you took this out as a separate post...it's an excellent read...

I wonder why Steve Clemons in particular is taking the line that Diane Feinstein did last night on Hardball. She kept insisting that we needed to get someone into the CIA quickly and that Haydon had enough experience to do the job. She mentioned Kappes (that Haydon will put in second command) would do a good job. Somewhere else I read that Kappes is one of the CIA agents who was very popular and had good relations with those who had resigned.

I got the impression it was a done deal from Feinstein as long as Haydon brought in Kappes. Steve Clemons seems to think it's a good thing, also.

Yet...hanging out there is that Haydon wasted billions on faulty intelligence software bought from MZM. According to "Newsweek's" Howie Feinman on Olberman last night, Hayden is a "down home, honest guy, liked by all" who will bring in Kappes to restore some good will amongst those upset with all the agents who have recently left. So all these references to this Kappes being the one who will really make some changes that will be popular and yet they will vote for Haydon who wasted billions and was in charge of illegal spyin.

Either some of these folks aren't doing their homework or nobody wants to bring up MZM and wasteful spending at this point. :shrug: