CIA shake up, top spies quit

[ScreamingEagle]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,138634,00.html

WASHINGTON — Senior managers at the CIA are rebelling against new CIA Director Porter Goss (search), opposing his efforts to shake up the agency's intelligence-gathering capabilities as some former agents complain that the agency is in a state of turmoil.

Goss, a former CIA agent, is being blamed for causing a dangerous distraction to the War on Terror by launching a turf war that has drawn the nation's spy service into a partisan battlefield.

Goss, who as a Republican congressman headed up the intelligence panel that intensely scrutinized the CIA's activities and pre-war intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, appears unconcerned about stepping on toes as he seeks to institute major bureaucratic reforms.

"Porter Goss has been given a mandate by the president to fix things, there seems to be a widespread agreement that things need to be changed so there's going to be some grinding of gears when you're changing policy, personnel or practices," said Peter Brookes of the Heritage Foundation.

Former acting director John McLaughlin (search), who took over when George Tenet (search) resigned as head of central intelligence this summer, resigned last week. While McLaughlin's departure was expected, sources told FOX News that McLaughlin volunteered to help Goss through the transition, but was told somewhat icily that his services weren't needed.

On Monday, the agency's top spy, Stephen Kappes, who is deputy director for operations, resigned as did his chief deputy, Michael Sulick. The two headed the agency's clandestine services department. Kappes and Sulick have been involved in heated debates — some have described them as feuds — with senior aides to Goss.

Kappes, who has been at the CIA for 23 years and is considered a specialist on the Middle East, quit after a heated meeting with Goss' senior aides. He refused to reconsider and started moving his belongings out of his office over the weekend.

A former senior intelligence official credited Kappes with being "principally responsible" for the operation that resulted in Libya's leader, Moammar al-Qaddafi, turning over his weapons of mass destruction to the United States.

Sulick headed the agency's counterintelligence division before becoming Kappes' deputy. Both rose to their positions this summer.

CIA critics say change, even one that provokes high-level resignations, is long overdue.

"This is a dysfunctional agency and in some ways, a rogue agency," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on a Sunday morning news show.

 

[dilloduck]

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,138634,00.html

I'm not a big McCain fan but something tells me that he knows what he's talking about on this one because he has nothing to gain or lose by commenting on this issue.

 

[ScreamingEagle]

I'm not a big McCain fan but something tells me that he knows what he's talking about on this one because he has nothing to gain or lose by commenting on this issue.

Evidently the agency was filled with wall-to-wall knee jerk liberals. Apparently in recent years Yale has been a big recruiting ground for the CIA and many liberals joined thinking it was just one big game to play. Just about every commission that has looked into the CIA has been appalled.

The CIA didn't like Bush very much either, as was indicated by the Plame Affair which was likely an attempted political assassination. Also permitting a current CIA analyst to publish a book about his personal political views and criticizing the President is another indication of bias against Bush. (published under the name "Anonymous," the book "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror")

Porter Goss, the newly appointed CIA Director replacing George Tenet, is acting like a wrecking ball, the screams are getting louder, and he is being accused of driving out a whole generation of spymasters. "Spymasters? The crowd that proclaimed East Germany to be the world's seventh greatest industrial power? The people who claimed to be running scads of agents in Cuba, only to find that every one was a double? The people whose counterintelligence superstar turned out to be a Soviet agent? The organization that didn't seem to have a single reliable agent on the ground in Iraq? The geniuses who thought that Saddam was in a nonexistent bunker on the eve of the invasion of Iraq? "

Good for Goss.

The above is summarized from an article by Michael Ledeen on the CIA at http://www.nationalreview.com/ledeen/ledeen200411160850.asp

 

[theim]

"Spymasters? The crowd that proclaimed East Germany to be the world's seventh greatest industrial power? The people who claimed to be running scads of agents in Cuba, only to find that every one was a double? The people whose counterintelligence superstar turned out to be a Soviet agent? The organization that didn't seem to have a single reliable agent on the ground in Iraq? The geniuses who thought that Saddam was in a nonexistent bunker on the eve of the invasion of Iraq? "

burned.