November 22, 2005

The Intelligence War

What I divine out of the Murray Waas' story is that the battle of the White House and Pentagon vs. the CIA went on from the moment of the Sep. 11 attacks. Waas reports on the Pentagon intelligence unit set up by Douglas Feith:

The Pentagon unit also routinely second-guessed the CIA's highly classified assessments. Regarding one report titled "Iraq and al-Qaeda: Interpreting a Murky Relationship," one of the Naval Reserve officers wrote: "The report provides evidence from numerous intelligence sources over the course of a decade on interactions between Iraq and al-Qaida. In this regard, the report is excellent. Then in its interpretation of this information, CIA attempts to discredit, dismiss, or downgrade much of this reporting, resulting in inconsistent conclusions in many instances. Therefore, the CIA report should be read for content only-and CIA's interpretation ought to be ignored."

Which makes me wonder why President Bush didn't fire George Tenent much, much sooner. Was Bush afraid he's start talking? And about what exactly?

Waas then ties in Valarie Plame:

The Plame affair was not so much a reflection of any personal animus toward Wilson or Plame, says one former senior administration official who knows most of the principals involved, but rather the direct result of long-standing antipathy toward the CIA by Cheney, Libby, and others involved. They viewed Wilson's outspoken criticism of the Bush administration as an indirect attack by the spy agency.

What we have now are government bodies caring more about who gets blamed in the media and Congress than how to win the war. What the hell is Porter Goss doing in Langley? John Negroponte as National Intelligence Chief hasn't done much either. Last time I heard we're all on the same side. The goal is to defeat the enemy not worrying about who'll win the Washington insider ego game.

"Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel"

del.icio.us | Digg it | Furl | reddit | Spurl | Yahoo MyWeb