We all know recently that the CIA Director Goss has recently stepped down from his post. Why?
As a child in the early 70s I loved to play the brave CIA agent. The man who walked in the shadows to gather information or the operative that would strike a quick blow for the free world. While at the time I thought the stories of James Bond to be nothing more then fiction; I would watch the Bond movies over and over. It would be mean years later that I learned that much of the earlier movies were based off of true stories.
William Casey would reinforce my notion about the CIA in his book recounting the days of William J. Donovan and others periods. An interesting read for anyone looking into the first days of the agency.
But what went wrong? How could the hard charging and dedicated people that kept an eye on the Soviet Union for 40 years, forced the USSR out of Afghanistan, cornered communism in Central America, and generally used what ever it took to be the eyes of the most powerful government on earth, fail? Fail so bad that they could not see the collapse of the USSR, see Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, utterly fail to rescue the Iranian hostages, find Osama (convince a President to take him when offered), or see 9/11 coming.
The agency is now full of Intelligence Bureaucrats that is to scared of lawyers or has been recruited from a pool of weak knead 70s peace nicks looking to reform the what they viewed as the icon of "evil government agencies". The last great days of the agency were under Bush senior 1975-77. Everything began to get weak with the villainization of the agency by the press, movies and Congress whose members were born out of the peace movement of the 60s. The Rockefeller Commission, Church Committee and Iran Contra investigations would create a witch-hunt for anyone that would even consider a covert operation and prosecute those who did. No longer did it take a hand full of men to tie up a whole nation or division. Now the agency was regulated (hands tied) to spending billion and using leagues of bureaucrat "Analyst" to sift through grainy satellite photos 3000 miles away from the target.
See you can’t be fired or demoted if you get your real info from the FBI or Israel. But wait even the FBI would be off limits after Jamie S. Gorelick built a wall between the two agencies. A little ironic that she also was a member of the 911 commission looking into the failures of the CIA. When the CIA director was questioned by the 911 commission about the CIA’s failure to communicate with the FBI and he relied; that it would be more appropriate to ask one of their own committee members that question. He was right. As for the Israeli information, that would be very suspect too. After so many years of the US friendly to Arafat, I would think Israel would not be so willing to provide accurate info. Not only to the US, but especially European countries where our analyst gathered most of the human info from.
In recent years leaks have sprung, personnel political missions created and multiple "analyst" speaking out about the agency are plaguing the agency. These are the neutered career bureaucrats hired in the 80-90s now fighting to keep their safe little world together. Porter Goss was to reform the agency into one of action again. Unfortunately he was unable to do the changes to make the agency relevant or effective.
I just hope General Hayden can do what Goss couldn’t. But already the old bureaucratic analyst and their allies are lining up against him. They now claim that a military man should not be in charge of the civilian agency, when many CIA Directors have been military men. The very first CIA Director was an active duty Admiral. It is time to bring order to chaos and a meat cleaver to a rotting limb of Government, before another 911 happens. Let the wagging tongues fly as those needing to get fired do. This will show the true character of those analyst. When people like Kennedy and Kerry was able get true agents canned in the 80-90s during their political witch-hunts; those agents did not talk. Now lets see if these analyst can keep their traps shut like loyal spooks. Sadly I’ll bet you ten to one that it will not happen.
