CIA: 'Dysfunctional' and 'rogue'
Robert Novak
Townhall.com
November 18, 2004
WASHINGTON -- After President Bush nominated him to be Director of Central
Intelligence (DCI), Rep. Porter Goss walked across the Capitol to meet with
a senator he hardly knew and who had criticized him: John McCain. There he
received advice confirming his determination to take a course that soon
became the talk of Washington.
McCain told Goss the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is a dysfunctional
organization. It has to be cleaned out. That is, the CIA does not perform
its missions. McCain told Goss that as DCI, he must get rid of the old boys
and bring in a new team at Langley. Moreover, McCain told me this week,
with CIA leaks intended to harm the re-election campaign of the president
of the United States, it is not only dysfunctional but a rogue
organization.
Following a mandate from the president for what McCain advised, Goss is
cleaning house. The reaction from the old boys confirms those harsh
adjectives of dysfunctional and rogue. The nation's capital has become
an echo chamber of anti-Goss invective with CIA officials painting a picture
for selected reporters of a lightweight House member from Florida, a mere
case officer at the CIA long ago, provoking high-level resignations and
dismantling a great intelligence service.
Veteran CIA-watchers such as McCain regard the Agency as anything but great
and commend Goss for taking courageous steps that previous DCIs avoided.
George Friedman, head of the Stratfor private intelligence service, refers
to Goss's housecleaning as long overdue.
That cleansing process has been inhibited by the CIA's fear factor as an
extraordinary leak machine. Its efficiency was attested to when Goss
appointed Michael V. Kostiw, recently staff director of the House
Intelligence Subcommittee on Terrorism, as the CIA's executive director.
Before Kostiw could check in at Langley, the old boys leaked information
that Kostiw was caught shoplifting in 1981 after 10 years as a CIA case
officer.
Kostiw then resigned the Agency's third-ranking post, though Goss retained
him as a special assistant. Kostiw's treatment has enraged people who have
known him during a long, successful career in Washington -- including John
McCain. The senator called Kostiw one of the finest, most decent men I have
ever met.
The story fed by Goss's enemies in the Agency is that dedicated career
intelligence officers have been replaced by Capitol Hill hacks. Their real
fear is that Goss will put an end to the CIA running its own national
security policy, which in the last campaign resulted in an overt attempt to
defeat Bush for re-election (intensifying after George Tenet left as DCI ).
I reported on Sept. 27 that Paul R. Pillar, the CIA's national intelligence
officer for the Near East and South Asia, told a private dinner on the West
Coast of secret, unheeded warnings to Bush about going to war. I learned of
this because of leaks from people who attended, but many other senior Agency
officials were covertly but effectively campaigning for Sen. John Kerry.
That effort seemed to include Imperial Hubris, an anonymously published
attack on Iraq War policy by CIA analyst Michael Scheuer. He has since left
the Agency, but he was still on the payroll when the CIA allowed the book to
be published. The Washington Post on Election Day quoted Scheuer as saying
CIA officials muzzled him in July only after they realized that he was
really criticizing them, not the president. As long as the book was being
used to bash the president, he said, they gave me carte blanche to talk to
the media.
Traditional bipartisanship in intelligence has been the victim, with
Democrats cheering the CIA Bush-bashing. Rep. Jane Harman, ranking Democrat
on the House Intelligence Committee, abandoned pretense of bipartisanship,
and Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the Senate committee's vice chairman, never
pretended. Both are attacking their former colleague who is now DCI.
McCain's use of the word rogue carries historical implications. A long,
debilitating time of troubles began for the CIA in 1975 after Sen. Frank
Church called it a rogue elephant that is out of control causing trouble
around the world. The current use of the word refers to the intelligence
agency playing domestic politics, which is an even more disturbing
aberration.
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/robertnovak/rn20041118.shtml
