CIA DO Resignations

[Roguish Lawyer]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/11/15/cia.resignations/index.html

Top leaders of CIA's clandestine service resign
From David Ensor
CNN Washington Bureau

Monday, November 15, 2004 Posted: 1:11 PM EST (1811 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Steven Kappes and Michael J. Sulick, the top leaders of the CIA's directorate of operations, resigned Monday morning, sources told CNN.

Their departures come in a period of turmoil at the intelligence agency as the new director, Porter Goss seeks to impose his control.

The directorate of operations is the agency's clandestine service.

Kappes took over from James Pavitt, who left in August.

Deputy Director John McLaughlin, who ran the agency after Director George Tenet resigned earlier this year, announced his retirement Friday. He said he was leaving for personal reasons.

Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's search for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, quit Thursday.

In August, President Bush tapped Goss, a former CIA officer and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, to lead the agency. During his confirmation hearings, Goss pledged to apply "tough love" to the CIA.

Sources say Kappes and Sulick clashed with deputies Goss brought in from Capitol Hill, where he served as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee before being chosen by President Bush as director of central intelligence.

Top Republican lawmakers voiced support for new CIA Director Porter Goss on Sunday after the resignations of McLaughlin and Scheuer raised questions about a possible upheaval in the agency.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said such turnover was to be expected as new leadership takes over.

"The aggressiveness with which we will continue to fight the war on terror for freedom and liberty and democracy throughout the world will not be affected in any way by any sort of personnel changes here or any sort of reorganization of the intelligence functions of entities here," said Frist, a Republican from Tennessee.

But critics suggest Goss may be doing more harm than good with his efforts to reshape the nation's flagship spy agency. California Rep. Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, accused Goss of bringing a "highly partisan, inexperienced staff" with him when he took office in September.

"The agency seems in free-fall in Washington, and that is a very, very bad omen in the middle of a war," Harman said.

Harman said Goss has the right to make changes at the spy agency, but he needs "a management team in place that can help achieve objectives."

"To make those changes effectively, he has to do them with an experienced staff, and he doesn't have one," Harman said. "Many of us worked with that staff in the House. Frankly, on both sides of the aisle in our committee, we were happy to see them go."

Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, called the CIA "a dysfunctional agency, and in some ways a rogue agency" that needed to be reformed. He accused some CIA insiders of leaking information to damage President Bush politically in the months before the election.

"Porter Goss is on the right track," McCain said on ABC's "This Week." "He is being savaged by these people that want the status quo, and the status quo is not satisfactory."

The CIA "is not providing the intelligence information necessary for the president to conduct the war on terror," he said.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, said the CIA "failed this country" with incorrect assessments of Iraq's weapons programs before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.

"I'm not worried about hurting people's feelings," said Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. "I want to stand behind those who work hard. But if you got it wrong, you need to be dealt with."

Elaine Quijano contributed to this report.

[Airbornelawyer]

Far more even-handed than the hatchet job the Washington Post ran Saturday. The WaPo article was typical of the mutual back-scratching incestuous relationship of Beltway bureaucrats and the media.

[vsvo]

AL,

Good point. I read that Wash Post article. That's a hell of a price the media pays to maintain their "sources" who'll whisper leaks in their ear.

[NousDefionsDoc]

But critics suggest Goss may be doing more harm than good with his efforts to reshape the nation's flagship spy agency.

Well, it ain't like he's finger paintin' over the Mona Lisa to begin with. How much worse can it get?

[1026]

Is the CIA a liberal rat's nest like State? If so, this is probably a good deal. :confused:

[rubberneck]

Fox News had a former CIA analyist on last night and he spared no expense in blasting these cry babies. Apparently a great number of CIA officials have already quietly resigned, but that was to be expected because there are always resignations when a new director takes over.

He faults these clowns for crying to the media and being openly opposed to Bush. He even went so far as to be very critical of some of these officials for allowing a book to be written by an active operative that was openly critical of the President. It is their place to provide the CINC with intelligence not to take positions on his policies. Just another example of how badly Langley needs an enima.....

[rubberneck]

Well, it ain't like he's finger paintin' over the Mona Lisa to begin with. How much worse can it get?

Its funny but during the past election cycle the Dems went out of their way to paint the CIA as a bunch of inept fools in desperate need of a house cleaning. Now that someone is actually doing what they demanded they now claim it is going too far. It gives me a headache. Figure out what the hell you want and then keep your firggin trap shut while good people get to work. I can't stand pols anymore.

[QRQ 30]

This part I can agree with:Its funny but during the past election cycle the Dems went out of their way to paint the CIA as a bunch of inept fools in desperate need of a house cleaning.

How they got there is another story. I'm sure Carter had a lot to do with it. The lynching od Col Rheault was probably the beginning of the modern era de-fanging process. In reference to covert operations Carter said: "Gentlemen don't look in gentelmen's back windows." He neglected the very first premise that our enemies aren't gentlemen.

In Kosovo, the CIA authenticated all of their information and the POTUS, based upon their "expert info" bombed the Chinese Embassy instead of the bad guys. It turns out that the super spooks used an outdated map -- a rookie (Lt) mistake. I truly feel sorry for Colin Powell who went before the UN and presented totally false intel again based upon CIA reports. It'll take at least a decade but they need to be torn down and replaced. Perhaps they can be left in place until their replacement is in place and ready to go operational. :(

[Airbornelawyer]

Is the CIA a liberal rat's nest like State? If so, this is probably a good deal. :confused:
It is not a question of liberal vs. conservative so much as bureaucratic inertia and comfort.

The Agency is comfortable with its bloated bureaucracy in Northern Virginia. Covert operators burn out quickly and in the modern world you don't have the derring-do of the Miles Copeland and Kermit Roosevelt era. But there are plenty of sinecures for analysts, especially for people more comfortable carping from the sidelines, Monday-morning quarterbacking, backseat-driving and metaphor-mixing over cocktails. And there are plenty of Washington Post reporters willing to share the cocktails and scratch backs in return for good leaks. Note the coverage - as Stephen Hayes of The Weekly Standard notes (http://weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=4925&R=A09C1DAAA):According to the Post, top advisers to Goss are "disgruntled" former CIA officials "widely known" for their "abrasive management style" and for criticizing the agency. One left the CIA after an undistinguished intelligence career and another is known for being "highly partisan."

On the other side, though, are disinterested civil servants: an unnamed "highly respected case officer," and Stephen Kappes, deputy director for operations "whose accomplishments include persuading Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi to renounce weapons of mass destruction this year."In a piece entitled "How Dare They? (http://www.spectator.org/util/print.asp?art_id=7388)," Jed Babbin, a former deputy undersecretary of defense, is even harsher:Let's assume everything these guys are saying is true. That they are all highly-skilled professionals whose lives have been dedicated to doing an important job for their country. That they are the best we have to do this job, and their failures are not their fault. That Porter Goss and his principal staffers are arrogant idiots from Congress who not only lack any clue about what they're doing, but are abusive and disrespectful to the pros. And let's toss in the assumption, as the Post quotes one former senior CIA official, that "[t]here's confusion throughout the ranks and an extraordinary loss of morale and incentive." So what should these troubled professionals do?

If they were as professional as they profess, if they were as dedicated as they declaim, if they were the leaders they would lead us to believe, they would do a whole bunch of things. But not resign. That's the selfish, unprofessional, and -- yes -- unpatriotic thing to do. What you do is tough it out, fight for what's right, and do everything you can to straighten your boss out and repair what damage he does while still following orders.

In the hope that some of those who are thinking of resigning may read this, I want to address you directly. Each of you should ask yourself the following questions. Do you think your job is important to the war against terrorists and the nations that support them? Do you believe you're good at it, and are making a significant contribution to the nation's defense? Do you think that, by your hard work and experience, you may save one American's life or give the president one more option in any decision he has to make? Do you believe that your subordinates rely on your leadership and mentoring? If you answered any of those questions with a "yes," and you still dare to resign, you should hang your head in shame for the rest of your born days. It's all about duty, honor and country. If you think your personal gripes are more important, then go ahead and resign. And good riddance to you.As they say in the blogosphere, read the whole thing.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Anytime somebody knocks them off their comfort zones, there will be wailing. Read about the R&A branch during WWII. The nature of the work requires them to be eggheads. The other thing is the DI works in the world of theory, and theorists tend to forget there is a difference.

They are as bad as tenured professors, because that is the world they come from and understand. They need a new Sherman Kent. They need to break out the old OSS files and look at what worked back then.

I would like to see General Boykin named DDI.

I would like to see the SOC take over the DDO.

The DCI needs to be a lion. No further political aspirations. Mission focused at any cost. He needs to sign his resignation later with no date and tell POTUS to sack him the minute he doesn't perform. Success or political suicide.

The Executive Branch needs to be reminded, in the harshest possible terms, that the intel is not there to support policy decisions already made. Anybody jigging an estimate should be publically disgraced, like Chuck Connors in "Branded". Metrics need to be established and enforced. Analysts need to be graded and held accountable for the accuracy of their estimates. Nobody gets tenure.

State needs to be scrapped and completely overhauled.

[Roguish Lawyer]

State needs to be scrapped and completely overhauled.

Funny you should mention this, because you are SecState in my ps.com cabinet.

What exactly do you propose in this regard?

[NousDefionsDoc]

Fire everybody above the grade of GS-Secretary and most of them.

Start all over. Get them out of the CT business. The FTO list needs to be done by the Agency, not State.

I don't want to be SECSTATE! I want to be SECDEF.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Look at THIS! (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4012839.stm)


Waaah! NOW he wants to start doing estimates on AQ?

[Roguish Lawyer]

I don't want to be SECSTATE! I want to be SECDEF.

And let those diplomatic skills go to waste? Sorry. TR will be my SECDEF. He'll need to get a bigger place, though. All those new gadgets he'll be trying out personally, you know. :D

[Roguish Lawyer]

Chief of staff -- Team Sergeant
Treasury -- Greenhat
Intelligence Czar -- Airborne Lawyer
Press Secretary -- Guy LMAO!

[Guy]

I got in trouble "one time" over there about the press. I was in fear of what she might publish or write. :eek:

"Off the record my ass...get the hell away from me before I...." :D

You have to be a damn dummy, to ask someone who is tired, dirty, hungry, just been missed... By some retard, that decides to blow himself up!

What the hell you expect me to say? It's an isolated incident?

Catepillar and John Deere would have a booming business if I was SECDEF! :)

[NousDefionsDoc]

by Michael ledeen - NRO contributing editor
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


November 16, 2004, 8:50 a.m.
Porter’s Purge
What spymasters?

I really didn't think I needed much help understanding the screams of misery emerging from the CIA's plush campus over in Langley, but since I've always taken a second opinion from America's most famous spy, I hit the trusty ouija board and very quickly — for once — got the late James Jesus Angleton online (so to speak; as a passionate devotee of fly fishing, he might not care for the metaphor).

Ledeen: Have you been following the hijinks at the agency?

JJA: Hah! Such fun! I wish I were more materially involved, but it's been a great few weeks, even at this distance. The election, Arafat...

ML: Before we get into the details, I've got a quickie for you. I was reading a recent interview with Charles McCarry, the ex-spook who writes terrific books, and he said something quite extraordinary.

JJA: To wit?

ML: He said: "I never met a stupid person in the agency. Or an assassin. Or a Republican... They were, at least in the operations side where I was...wall-to-wall knee-jerk liberals. And they were befuddled that the left outside the agency regarded them as some sort of right-wing threat. Because they were the absolute opposite, in their own politics."

JJA: Of course. I mean, they all came from Yale, which didn't exactly preach Social Darwinism. And then remember that during the McCarthy purges, any leftist at State who could get to CIA, jumped, and Allen Dulles protected them all. In the Fifties and early Sixties, the State Department was much more hard-line than the agency.

ML: Well, I think they've caught up by now...

JJA: No doubt, no doubt. I see where you're going.

ML: Yes, I'm sure you do. The CIA didn't like Bush very much; they wanted him out. He was very reluctant to believe that at the beginning, but he worked it out, didn't he?

JJA: It was probably the Plame Affair that clinched it. I can't ever remember the director of central intelligence pulling a stunt like that: asking the criminal division of Justice to investigate a leak at the White House.

ML: Yeah, exactly. Richard Helms once told me that they'd investigated some leaks, and invariably found that they had come from the top guys, and so the investigation ended right there.

JJA: Right. I was involved in a couple of those investigations. Helms was right.

ML: So the call for the Plame investigation was an attempted political assassination, so to speak.

JJA: Yes, and so was that incredible business about "Anonymous." The very idea of permitting a CIA analyst to publish a book containing his own personal policy views is so unprofessional and so totally political that it took my breath away. And it wasn't very kind to the president.

ML: I thought it represented a new low. Any intelligence service with a serious claim to professionalism would have gone all-out to prevent publication, and would certainly have terminated "Anonymous" for trying.

JJA: Yes, but "serious" is not a word that fits well with the agency's performance in recent years, is it? Every single commission or committee that has looked into CIA — and the other agencies too, let's not forget — has been appalled.

ML: So I take it you're not sympathetic to the latest torrent of leaks, complaining that Porter Goss is wrecking the place by driving out a whole generation of professional spymasters.

JJA: 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? Pfui.

ML: Doesn't seem so hard to get, does it? So why are so many journalists cooperating?

JJA: Most likely because the purgees are sources of theirs, I'd say.

ML: Well, they are certainly sources now, even if they weren't in the past.

JJA: Hoho.

ML: Some of the articles are suggesting that this housecleaning is being driven by the White House. What do you think?

JJA: Who knows? Goss has been critical of the agency for many years, I don't think he needs instructions from the Oval Office. On the other hand, it's not likely he's doing it all on his own, so let's call it a meeting of the minds.

ML: Or maybe it's the result of a conversation at a lower level.

JJA: Quoting John Kennedy again are we?

At which point the usual static shut down the ouija board, and I was left marveling at the spirit's amazing memory.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Uncertain Trumpet: Imperial Hubris is an alarming book.
http://www.nationalreview.com/flashback/frum200411161511.asp
Sept. 27, 2004
David Frum

Imperial Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror, by Anonymous (Brassey's, 352 pp., $27.50)

This is an alarming book, but not in the way its author intended. It delivers an urgent danger signal — not about al-Qaeda, but about intelligence services staffed with analysts who think the way the author of this book thinks.

This latest attack on the Bush administration's war policies was written anonymously by Michael Scheuer, a veteran CIA analyst who headed the Agency's bin Laden unit in the late 1990s. His assessment of the War on Terror is grimly pessimistic: Everything the U.S. has done has been wrong. It was wrong to wait even three weeks before striking Afghanistan, wrong to try to rebuild Afghanistan afterward, wrong to try to cut the funding for terror, wrong to overthrow Saddam, wrong to crack down on radical Islamic groups in this country and worldwide.

As Scheuer sees it, the U.S. is now confronting a global Islamic insurgency under the leadership of the most charismatic and attractive Muslim leader to come along in at least a couple of hundred years. Scheuer dismisses hopeful talk about bin Laden representing only a fringe of a fringe within Islam. Bin Laden's views, he contends, are shared "by a large percentage of the world's Muslims across the political spectrum." America must recognize that "much of Islam is fighting us, and more is leaning that way."

Suppressing so widely backed an insurgency would demand slaughter on an almost unimaginable scale:

If U.S. leaders truly believed that the country is at war with bin Laden and the Islamists, they would dump the terminally adolescent bureaucrats and their threat matrix and tell the voters that war brings repeated and at times grievous defeats as well as victories, and proceed with relentless, brutal, and yes, blood-soaked offensive military actions until we have annihilated the Islamists who threaten us, or so mutilate their forces, supporting populations, and physical infrastructure that they recognize continued war-making on their part is futile.

Scheuer understandably flinches from such massive bloodletting — and indeed, he is not truly contemplating it. He deploys his tough talk only as part of the old bureaucratic trick of generating unacceptable alternatives in order to manipulate policymakers: Well, Mr. Secretary, we have worked up three options for you. Option A is total passivity. Option B is global thermonuclear war. And Option C is . . .

In Scheuer's case, Option C turns out to be a policy of averting terrorism by figuring out what the terrorists want, and then giving it to them. Such a policy of — shall we call it "conciliation"? — is feasible in Scheuer's opinion because Osama bin Laden and his Islamists are guided by defined and indeed "limited" goals:

First, the end of all U.S. aid to Israel, the elimination of the Jewish state, and in its stead the creation of an Islamic Palestinian state. Second, the withdrawal of all U.S. and Western military forces from the Arabian peninsula — a shift of most units from Saudi Arabia to Qatar fools no Muslims and will not cut the mustard — and all Muslim territory. Third, the end of all U.S. involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq. Fourth, the end of U.S. support for, and acquiescence in, the oppression of Muslims by the Chinese, Russian, Indian, and other governments. Fifth, restoration of full Muslim control over the Islamic world's energy resources and a return to market prices [sic], ending the impoverishment of Muslims caused by oil prices set by Arab regimes to placate the West. Sixth, the replacement of U.S.-protected Muslim regimes that do not govern according to Islam by regimes that do. For bin Laden, only Mullah Omar's Afghanistan met these criteria; other Muslim regimes are candidates for annihilation.

We've all heard this list before; what's new here is a senior U.S. counterterrorism official agreeing that the demands included on it can and should be met. Yet so Scheuer does: "We can either reaffirm current policies, thereby denying their role in creating the hatred bin Laden personifies, or we can examine and debate the reality we face, the threat we must defeat, and then — if deemed necessary — devise policies that better suit U.S. interests."

Scheuer's list of policy changes is headed by a change in policy toward Israel, a country he condemns as a "theocracy in all but name," characterized by "arrogant racism." He also makes it clear that he sees no reason for the U.S. to continue supporting any of its non-European allies against takeover by bin Ladenism: "For our own welfare and survival, we must 'watch others die with equanimity' and help after 'the flames burn themselves out' by focusing our overseas intercourse on trade, sharing knowledge, and donating food and medicine." He is ready to evacuate all "military and naval bases on the Arabian peninsula." And here's how he characterizes the struggles of four other countries victimized by Islamist terror:

Washington has taken measures to enhance its ties to India and simultaneously to coerce Pakistan to halt aid for Muslim Kashmiri insurgents, thereby giving de facto sanction to India's sorry record of abusing its Kashmiri Muslim citizens, as well as its Israel-like refusal to obey long-standing U.N. resolutions. Similarly, Washington has supported and armed the Indonesian military's efforts to smash Islamist separatists on Aceh, advised and participated in Manila's attacks on Moro Islamist groups in Mindanao, and backed the Yemeni regime's drive to keep local Islamists at bay. . . . The point here is not to question whether the governments above are entitled to handle domestic "terrorism" as they see fit — they are — but to ask if the United States is wise to ally itself with regimes whose barbarism has long earned the Muslim world's hatred.

Three of these four countries — India, Indonesia, and the Philippines — are secular democracies under attack from the very same groups that hit the U.S. on 9/11. Yet in every case, Scheuer disdains them — India he labels "unsavory" and "malodorous" — and manifestly sympathizes with their attackers. And his tale is seriously misleading. Manila, for example, only "attacked" the Moro Islamist groups because the latter have launched a campaign of murder against Filipino citizens and foreign visitors. Aceh and Kashmir are more complicated stories, but you would think that Scheuer — who claims expertise in South Asia — would know that those Kashmiri "insurgents" are Qaeda-backed terrorists who nearly succeeded in triggering an Indo-Pakistani nuclear war by opening fire on the Indian Parliament in December 2001, killing nine people. Putting the Kashmiri terrorists out of business is essential to the peace of the region.

Scheuer's habit of seeing every world issue through the lens of Muslim aggrievement leads him into amazing double standards. While he apparently favors independence for the Indonesian province of Aceh, he condemns the U.S. for helping to achieve independence from Indonesia for East Timor, "ignoring the principle of self-determination." How does it violate "self-determination" to grant independence to an ethnically and religiously distinct territory that Indonesia seized by force and where the pro-independence president won 83 percent of the vote in a free and fair election?

It is also telling that in his accounting of U.S. successes and defeats in the War on Terror, Scheuer lists as defeats the bombing of Taliban forces in Afghanistan, the addition of the anti-Chinese Eastern Turkistan Islamic Movement to the State Department terror list, a joint U.S.-Indian military exercise in Kashmir, and the Israeli assassination of Sheik Ahmed Yasin. What do all three of these accomplishments have in common? Very simple: They could potentially offend an important section of Muslim opinion. It would seem that the former head of the CIA's bin Laden unit would regard the actual capture of bin Laden as the most catastrophic possible defeat of all.

What distinguishes Scheuer's approach from that of, say, Michael Moore is that Scheuer is not an ignorant activist, but a person charged with informing the nation's leaders about the terrorist threat. It is disturbing, at the least, that a man who had such a large role in defending the nation from Islamic extremism seems to have been mentally captivated by it. I have a strong feeling that Scheuer's 15 minutes of fame have ended already. His book is no longer seen in the shop windows; its ranking on Amazon drops daily. But the spirit of appeasement that produced this book has not, alas, vanished — not from inside the national-security agencies, nor from the larger policy community.

[NousDefionsDoc]

I think a little house cleaning was in order.

The media smell blood in the water. It will be interesting to see what "Tell All" books come out after the Night of the Long Knives over there.

[Roguish Lawyer]

Interior -- Bill Harsey
Press secretary -- Sacamuelas!
HUD -- D9
HHS -- Doc T
Nat'l Sec Adv -- Magician

[Huey14]

May I be the NZ Ambassador? I have always fancied a limo.

[Smokin Joe]

RL,

Can I have Homeland Security?

[brownapple]

Treasury -- Greenhat


Budgets for maintaining beaurocracy are right out!!

[rubberneck]

Goss aims to rein in the rogues

November 18, 2004

BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST


After President Bush nominated him to be director of Central Intelligence, 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 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 director, 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 directors 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 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 director ).

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 Bush. ''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 former colleague Goss.

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.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Yep, the media definitely smells blood in the water...

[Sacamuelas]

NSA director could be in line for CIA deputy director post
By George Cahlink
http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/1104/111704g1.htm

The Central Intelligence Agency has been rocked in recent weeks by changes brought by new director Porter Goss, and the shake-up could continue with the appointment of a tough deputy director.

Reuters reported on Tuesday that Goss was considering naming National Security Agency Director Lt. Gen Michael Hayden to the agency's No. 2 slot. John McLaughlin, who served as acting CIA director this summer, recently announced his retirement from the deputy director post.

Hayden has been one of NSA's most visible, powerful and, in some quarters, controversial directors, as he has fought to reorganize the signals intelligence agency. If he were tapped for the CIA slot, he'd likely bring the same aggressive management style to the beleaguered agency.

Goss served as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence before being nominated for the CIA job in August. In that position, he conducted oversight of the NSA and worked closely with Hayden to increase the agency's budget.

Hayden, who is NSA's longest-serving director, has been relentless in pushing change at the intelligence agency since taking over in March 1999. He's asked longtime agency workers to retire to make way for new hires, outsourced information technology work, expanded the pool of contractors, raised the agency's profile, and consolidated leadership ranks.

Few would argue that changes were not needed at an agency with a veteran workforce trained and computer systems designed for the Cold War. James Bamford, author of two best-selling books on the NSA, credits Hayden with continuing to let veteran workers go even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
"The people they had were people they did not need," said Bamford, who noted that the agency had a surplus of Soviet analysts and linguists but too few Middle East experts.

Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles Boyd, now head of Business Executives for National Security, who served with Hayden, said, "He sold needed reforms to those with oversight and resources. He's presided over a transition there from an institution geared toward the Cold War into one for a new world with different technology."

Some NSA veterans however, have protested Hayden's moves.
"Coming to a place and telling a large group of well-qualified professionals they need be cleaned out is not the way to change an agency," said Michael Lavin, who worked at the agency from 1947 to 1993, first as an analyst and later as a policymaker and spokesman. NSA veterans with obsolete skills should be retrained to prevent the loss of corporate memory, Lavin argued.

Hayden earned praise for his efforts to expand the NSA's contracting base and upgrade the agency's aging computer systems. In 2001, the agency inked a $2 billion outsourcing deal with an industry team, led by Computer Sciences Corp., to upgrade and run the agency's computer operations over the next 10 years.
Congress, however, has not been happy with how the agency tracked its spending. In 2004, the NSA lost its independent spending authority, and its budget is now managed by Defense undersecretaries.

Steven Aftergood, an intelligence expert with the Federation of American Scientists, noted that Hayden is one of the few intelligence managers to escape blame for Sept. 11. "Everyone has been down on the CIA," he said, "but NSA came through almost completely unscathed."

[NousDefionsDoc]

NSA veterans with obsolete skills should be retrained to prevent the loss of corporate memory, Lavin argued.

And there is a big part of the problem, right there. "Corporate" what the hell?

[Airbornelawyer]

And there is a big part of the problem, right there. "Corporate" what the hell?
"Corporate" as in "of the body." Collective or institutional memory. Of course, if that's just an excuse for keeping deadwood around - "because we know how things get done" - then I take you point.

[NousDefionsDoc]

From the way they talk lately, I think he means "corporate" as in "corporation" as in "I'm the CwhateverO and you can't fire me."

[1026]

LOL... It's known as 'The Company' for a reason. :p

[Roguish Lawyer]

From the way they talk lately, I think he means "corporate" as in "corporation" as in "I'm the CwhateverO and you can't fire me."

You think there is value to an experienced corps of NCOs? I think that's what he's talking about.

[Smokin Joe]

Never mind

[NousDefionsDoc]

You think there is value to an experienced corps of NCOs? I think that's what he's talking about.


You are trying to equate a bunch of arrogant, Ivy League, bureaucratic, "hang on got my my 30 and Volvo" college boys with my NCO Corps?

I think what he is talking about is that they have been sitting on their asses, unquestioned because "Its classified and you wouldn't understand" and now they're out because they haven't performed. Hell Ray Charles can see that.

These people need to be graded just like everybody else. Another one is State. If we have to send troops, I would be looking really hard at the State team responsible for that country. You start holding them accountable, they'll get off their asses and start doing their jobs.

[Roguish Lawyer]

You are trying to equate a bunch of arrogant, Ivy League, bureaucratic, "hang on got my my 30 and Volvo" college boys with my NCO Corps?

LOL -- no, but I think that analogy illustrates the argument that he was trying to make. I agree with you.

[NousDefionsDoc]

The Crisis in the CIA
Stratfor
Nov 18, 2004

By George Friedman

The CIA exploded in public rancor this week as two of the senior members of the Directorate of Operations resigned over the behavior of newly appointed Director Porter Goss and that of some of his senior advisers. As one report had it, some of Goss's people were "abrasive" and did not treat old-time CIA hands with appropriate courtesy. The real issue is who runs the CIA -- the senior professionals or the administration.

On the surface, the answer to this question should be easy. An intelligence service should be entirely independent, analyzing the world according to the highest professional standards. It's on the next level down that the problem appears. The CIA has not been doing a very good job in analyzing the world. It has been making some serious mistakes on some very important issues. Therefore, the question is this: What do you do when an intelligence service has failed and is incapable of repairing itself? Ultimately, the president is responsible for U.S. intelligence. It follows, then, that the principle of independence must submit to the principle of subordination when the organization has a systemic failure.

That is the argument in a nutshell. The chief lieutenants of former CIA Director George Tenet argue that the CIA has not failed. Rather, they argue, the failure was in the administration, which forced the agency to make dubious analytical calls for political reasons or, alternatively, ignored CIA analyses they disagreed with in favor of analyses they liked. The least grievous charge they make against the Bush administration is that it cherry-picked the analyses that fit with its world view and ignored the others. Therefore, not only is the CIA not a failed institution, but, to the extent it failed, it failed because of the administration that is now trying to repair it through Goss.

The administration counters that not only has the CIA failed consistently, but it has tried to cover up its failures by leaking classified documents that are designed to paint the administration in the worst possible light at the most sensitive political moment. So, for example, they charge that the CIA leaked a report indicating the agency had warned Bush about problems in Iraq -- and leaked it in a time and way that would cause maximum damage to the president. Similarly, they charge that the CIA floated a report that a Defense Department intelligence analyst was an Israeli spy, in order to damage Defense Department officials with whom it was at odds.

The Core Problem

This argument is certainly entertaining, and Washington lunches are being fueled by the cat fight, but it cannot be understood in the current context alone. The question of CIA effectiveness is a fundamental issue that has been on the national agenda since the agency was founded. This is merely the latest edition of arguments that raged in every administration -- from the Bay of Pigs to Rwanda. Who screwed up and when did they do it is an issue that has raged from the beginning.

The issue cannot be approached in a simplistic matter. It is essential to understand what the CIA is good at and what it is not good at. It is then necessary to determine what part of the CIA is most important and what part can be dispensed with at a particular historical moment.

The CIA has consistently failed to identify major historical events:

1. It failed to predict the North Korean invasion of South Korea or the Chinese intervention.
2. It failed to forecast or clearly understand the Sino-Soviet split.
3. It failed to understand the nature of the Cuban revolution until after Castro was in power.
4. It did not know that the Soviets had tactical nuclear weapons in Cuba and were prepared to use them in the event of an American invasion.
5. It failed to understand the probable course of the Vietnam War
6. It failed to predict the collapse of the Soviet Union.


This is far from an exhaustive list. Moreover, it isn't quite fair to say the CIA failed to predict these things in the sense that no one in the CIA had any idea these things were happening. Rather, it means that institutionally -- in the official guidance given by the CIA to policymakers -- the CIA failed to clearly and unequivocally forecast what was going to happen. As all of us in the intelligence game know, one should always hold a contrarian analysis in a file cabinet somewhere, which, when produced, demonstrates that you knew it all the time. But the fact is, the only analysis that counts is the one you brief to the president and the National Command Authority -- and on that basis, this is a sampling of the failures.

If we look at this list, there are two classes of events with which the CIA has trouble. The first are events that are discontinuities -- or, in other words, when something completely outside the box occurs. When we look at these six cases, we see that they share a common thread: They violate the conventional expectations of the time. Arguing that the Soviets and Chinese were enemies, or that the Soviet Union was going to collapse, went against the received wisdom of the time. All of these did. The CIA has difficulty imagining major historical discontinuities.

The second class of events it has trouble with are those that are not amenable to covert intelligence collection. Some of these were, of course, things the Directorate of Operations should have known, such as the Korean War or tactical nuclear weapons in Cuba. But the most important of these things, such as the collapse of the Soviet Union or the Sino-Soviet split -- things that really transformed history -- were not amenable to covert collections, because the decision-makers involved were not themselves aware of what was happening. The Sino-Soviet split emerged over time, even in the minds of the decision-makers. The last people to know that the Soviet Union was going to collapse were in the Soviet Politburo.

The greatest capability of the CIA -- and the intelligence community in general -- is covert operations that gather information from a nation's leadership. The CIA is not perfect at this, but it is outstanding. However, an event that involves non-nation-state actors (such as Castro, prior to the Cuban revolution) or more important, in which the leaders of the nation-state are themselves unaware, leaves the CIA helpless.

An event that breaks the paradigm of an era and that cannot be covertly sourced is what the CIA is worse at. Broad historical events that are visible to everyone, but which requires an ability to intuit the deep trend, is something the CIA simply doesn't do very well. When that broad historical event violates all conventional expectations, the CIA is fairly helpless.

[NousDefionsDoc]

The War

Al Qaeda was the classic failure for the CIA. Al Qaeda was not a national government but a small, apparently eccentric, collection of Islamists. This was already outside of the CIA's sweet spot. The Sept. 11 attacks were completely outside the paradigm that the CIA -- and others, including Stratfor -- was working with. The model of terrorism they had studied for a generation did not include an attack of this order. Therefore, since the CIA was dealing with a non-state group and with a historical discontinuity, the agency continued its record for getting it wrong.

The problem the CIA has is that it also failed in what was supposed to be its sweet spot -- covert gathering of intelligence from senior state officials in Iraq concerning a war that had been going on, in effect, since 1990. There were no surprises here, no discontinuities, no funky, off-the-wall groups. This was mainline intelligence-gathering.

It was here that the CIA made the core mistakes:

1. It did not tell either Presidents Bill Clinton or George W. Bush that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. It told both of them that it did.
2. It did not understand Saddam Hussein's war plan and did not warn Bush that the fall of Baghdad would trigger an organized guerrilla war. Warning of unrest is absolutely not the same as warning of a war plan.
3. It did not provide clear intelligence on the status of the Shia in Iraq and the degree of organization that had been achieved by Iranian intelligence.

The failure to predict the Sept. 11 attacks was ultimately a systematic failure hardwired into the CIA. The ways in which it collects intelligence and the way its analytic process works have consistently generated failures on this level. When an institution fails to do a certain type of work well for 50 years, it is hardly fair to condemn it when it repeats the failure. The failures it can be condemned for, however, are the mainstream collection and analytic failures that shaped the Iraq campaign.

This is what the debate has raged over. The Bush administration gave the CIA a pass over Sept. 11; they are not giving it a pass over Iraq. The CIA is responding by arguing (a) they were forced to skew data and (b) they did provide accurate analysis but were ignored. The administration is arguing (a) no one forced them to skew data and (b) the claim that they did provide accurate intelligence undermines the claim in (a). They say that the CIA was just dead wrong in its intelligence and then tried to cover it up by savaging the administration.

There are two conclusions here. First, the fact that the agency is being given a pass on Sept. 11 is the most serious problem. The consistent inability of the CIA to capture hard-to-source discontinuities is not a charming foible, but an unacceptable shortcoming. Being good in the small things doesn't matter if you can't do the big things. On that basis alone, the CIA should be rebuilt. But it is not on that basis that the administration is going after them.

Instead, they are going after the failure of the agency to do the small things right. We tend to agree that the CIA's failures in Iraq are too numerous to be explained by political pressure. The consistent inability to generate radical analysis is caused by the inherent conservatism of the complex process that Tenet put into place. Where committees rule, the product will be the lowest common denominator. On this, we side with the administration.

However, the problem is not simply to streamline a process that works well on small things. The administration doesn't appreciate the fact that the enormous failures of the CIA on the big things are the real problem. It is what gave us everything from the Chosen Reservoir to bafflement at the sight of the Berlin Wall coming down. The administration is missing its chance to rebuild American intelligence in fundamental ways -- and there is no better time to do it than during a war, as "Wild Bill" Donovan and the OSS showed.

[NousDefionsDoc]

http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/953rougx.asp

"Nothing"
What Michael Scheuer has to say about bin Laden and Saddam--and what that says about the CIA's performance.
by Stephen F. Hayes
11/22/2004 12:00:00 AM

MICHAEL SCHEUER, head of the CIA's bin Laden unit and until recently a senior analyst, said something remarkable last week on Hardball with Chris Matthews.

Scheuer told Matthews that he "happened to do the research on links between al Qaeda and Iraq," and Matthews asked him, "and what did you come up with?"

"Nothing."

It was a strange and troubling response. As Thomas Joscelyn points out, Scheuer argued in his 2002 book, Through Our Enemies Eyes, that Iraq and al Qaeda worked together regularly. His claims were unequivocal. A few examples:


[Bin Laden] "made a connection with Iraq's intelligence service through its Khartoum station." (p. 119).

In Sudan, Bin Laden decided to acquire and, when possible, use chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons against Islam's enemies. Bin Laden's first moves in this direction were made in cooperation with NIF [Sudan's National Islamic Front], Iraq's intelligence service and Iraqi CBRN scientists and technicians. He made contact with Baghdad with its intelligence officers in Sudan and by a [Hassan] Turabi-brokered June-1994 visit by Iraq's then-intelligence chief Faruq al-Hijazi; according to Milan's Corriere della Sera, Saddam, in 1994, made Hijazi responsible for "nurturing Iraq's ties to [Islamic] fundamentalist warriors. Turabi had plans to formulate a "common strategy" with bin Laden and Iraq for subverting pro-U.S. Arab regimes, but the meeting was a get-acquainted session where Hijazi and bin Laden developed a good rapport that would "flourish" in the late 1990s. (p. 124)

There is information showing that in the 1993-1994 period bin Laden began to work
with Sudan and Iraq to acquire a CBRN capability for al Qaeda. (p. 124)

Regarding Iraq, bin Laden, as noted, was in contact with Baghdad's intelligence service since at least 1994. He reportedly cooperated with it in the area of chemical-biological-radiological-nuclear [CBRN] weapons and may have trained some fighters in Iraq at camps run by Saddam's anti-Iran force, the Mujahedin al-Khalq. (p. 184)

In pursuing tactical nuclear weapons, bin Laden has focused on the FSU (former Soviet Union) states and has sought and received help from Iraq. (p. 190)

We know for certain that bin Laden was seeking CBRN [chemical-biological-radiological-nuclear] weapons . . . and that Iraq and Sudan have been cooperating with bin Laden on CBRN weapon acquisition and development. (p. 192)


So how can Scheuer now say Iraq and al Qaeda did not collaborate? Tim Russert noted that Scheuer seems "to lay out a pretty strong case of connection between al Qaeda and Iraq," and asked him about the apparent contradiction on Meet the Press. Here is the entire exchange:


Russert: So you saw a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden?

Scheuer: I certainly saw a link when I was writing the books in terms of the open-source literature, unclassified literature, but I had nothing to do with Iraq during my professional career until the run-up to the war. What I was talking about on "Hardball" was I was assigned the duty of going back about nine or 10 years in the classified archives of the CIA. I went through roughly 19,000 documents, probably totaling 50,000 to 60,000 pages, and within that corpus of material, there was absolutely no connection in the terms of a--in terms of a relationship--in the terms of a relationship . . .

[NousDefionsDoc]

Russert: But your book did point out some contacts?

Scheuer: Certainly it was available in the open-source material, yes, sir.


This is nonsense. Scheuer would have us believe that although he never saw an Iraq-al Qaeda connection in the classified intelligence as head of the bin Laden unit, he wrote a book in 2002 including numerous examples of that connection based solely on open sources. Is it true that Scheuer did not see classified intelligence about the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship before 2002? That seems highly unlikely.

The Clinton administration cited intelligence on Iraq-al Qaeda to justify its strikes on the al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in the Sudan on August 20, 1998. Those officials stand by their decision today. Former Defense Secretary William Cohen told the September 11 Commission that he saw intelligence that the head of the al Shifa plant traveled to Baghdad to meet with the head of Iraq's VX nerve gas program. Such intelligence also led the Clinton Administration to include the Iraq-al Qaeda connection in its first indictment of bin Laden.

Scheuer implies--but does not say directly--that he now believes the open source information is wrong. Would he have written that he was "certain" that Iraq provided WMD assistance to al Qaeda based solely on reports in an Italian newspaper or in other open sources? (I wonder if Scheuer plans to write a new introduction to that book to alert readers that he now considers several important passages to be dead wrong.)

Just for the sake of argument, let's take Scheuer's comments yesterday
at face value. Let's assume that he based the conclusions in his 2002 book solely on open sources and that he has since looked through 19,000 pages of classified material that gives not so much as a hint of an Iraq-al Qaeda connection. If he's right, then the intelligence failure on Iraq is far greater than we have thus far realized.

Consider what we have learned since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003. I will include in this list only those facts that are beyond dispute--things we've learned from captured documents authenticated by U.S. intelligence and in debriefings with senior Iraqi intelligence officials.

We know that Iraqi Intelligence officials reported in 1992 that Osama bin Laden was an Iraqi intelligence an "asset" that had "good relations" with the Iraqi intelligence station in Syria. We know that Sudanese government officials met with Uday Hussein at bin Laden's behest in 1994 to discuss cooperation on bin Laden's behalf. We know that deputy Iraqi intelligence director Faruq Hijazi met with bin laden, at least twice. We know that Saddam agreed to air anti-Saudi propaganda on Iraqi national television. We know that the Iraqis considered the numerous "contacts" with bin laden a "relationship"--as revealed in their internal documents. We know that in the mid-1990s an internal Iraqi intelligence memo revealed that Saddam sought "further cooperation" with al Qaeda. And we know that meetings between high-level al Qaeda terrorists and senior Iraqi intelligence officials took place throughout 1998.

Would Scheuer have us believe that there was nothing--"absolutely no connection in terms of a relationship," to use his words--in the 50,000 to 60,000 pages of classified intelligence that he recently reviewed? If so, the intelligence failures on Iraq are far greater than anyone has imagined.

One final point: Scheuer told Russert that he "had nothing to do with Iraq during my professional career until the run-up to the war." That is a jaw-dropping admission. And it might go along way to explaining why, despite the mounting evidence of a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, the CIA for years overlooked or downplayed it.

We now know that the CIA never penetrated the inner circle of either Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein. We know this because senior U.S. intelligence officials have admitted it.

And now Scheuer tells us that in all of his analytical work on bin Laden he never looked at Iraq until shortly before the war.

Porter Goss has a big job to do.


Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Goss should sack the lot of them.

[magician]

this guy Scheuer is really beginning to look like a certifiable loony.

good riddance, I say.

unless....unless his talking is part of some sort of weird disinformation campaign....some bizarre, complex campaign meant to confuse bin Laden....

hell, he is confusing me.

I just do not get it.

[Jimbo]

I would like to see the SOC take over the DDO.

That would be truely awful. Truely.

[Jimbo]

Also, be wary of anything George Friedman says on this subject. I hear he thinks HE should be the DCI. He's kind of the Hackworth or Ralph Peters of the intel community. I also like that Friedman tries to make hay out of CIA's record. Stratfor has been wrong a number of times as well, and has a much shorter history.

[Jimbo]

Scheuer is a nut. An unprofessional nut to boot.

[The Reaper]

Scheuer is a nut. An unprofessional nut to boot.

I saw his interview and would have to agree.

Lots of disconnects in his statements.

Gets lots of play from the libs, though.

TR

[NousDefionsDoc]

That would be truely awful. Truely.

Oh, I don't know. The Army guys did a pretty good job of running it in WWII when it was the OSS.

[Jimbo]

Oh, I don't know. The Army guys did a pretty good job of running it in WWII when it was the OSS.

Well, the Army's changed a lot since WWII.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Did a pretty good job of running SOG after they took it away from the Agency in Vietnam as well.

I agree, the Army has changed a lot since WWII. Spec Ops has been an acceptble trade.

Who's the Chief of Staff of the Army again? ;)

[Jimbo]

Who's the Chief of Staff of the Army again? ;)

Shoomaker? I don't get it.

You are right they did a great job of running many programs.

There is a significant difference in worldview between DoD and CIA. Some of the results of that worldview are very bad. Some of the results are very good.

[Roguish Lawyer]

Jimbo:

What reforms, if any, do you recommend in the intelligence community?

:munchin

[brownapple]

That would be truely awful. Truely.

Hard to believe it could be worse than the CIA doing it...

[magician]

I think that you must have a civilian agency, safely outside the purview of the Pentagon.

Absent this, you will inevitably have some jackass come in and make everyone get haircuts and stand in formations and practice D&C to make a point. This has happened at every SMU in the inventory. While I can understand the motive, I think that letting things get so far where it is seen as necessary is the error.

It is not like the spooks grow their paramilitary guys completely from alien stock, anyway. They are all former military.

[Jimbo]

Absent this, you will inevitably have some jackass come in and make everyone get haircuts and stand in formations and practice D&C to make a point. This has happened at every SMU in the inventory. While I can understand the motive, I think that letting things get so far where it is seen as necessary is the error.

Yes. That is what I was getting at in my last post.

[Jimbo]

Jimbo:

What reforms, if any, do you recommend in the intelligence community?

:munchin

Observers have identified some areas where things could be improved. Central to any reform needs to be a legitimate effort to change the analytical culture. I have heard that many analysts are not very open-minded and very rarely are willing to challenge their own basic assumptions about issues. Unfortunately, this will require firing or early retiring a number of people. That is a good thing, on the whole.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Observers have identified some areas where things could be improved. Central to any reform needs to be a legitimate effort to change the analytical culture. I have heard that many analysts are not very open-minded and very rarely are willing to challenge their own basic assumptions about issues. Unfortunately, this will require firing or early retiring a number of people. That is a good thing, on the whole.


I agree with this.

I also think maybe haircuts for DO wouldn't be a terrible thing. They need to get back to the basics. Thier instiutional knowledge and cultre is one of deep -seated crap. Scratch the whole thing and start over. I wouldn't worry too much about haircuts, from the pics I've seen coming out of 'Stan, its not an issue anymore.

[magician]

I think the primary thing is to at least create one safe place where genuine rogue thinkers, guys who think like bank robbers, who have true criminal mindsets, can flourish and wargame and contribute.

There is too much homogeneity, too much careerism, too much worrying about mortgages and college tuitions for the kids, and not enough guys who are kept on a reservation behind a fence with a sign labeled "break in time of war."

If there is one thing that we need, it is guys who can go out on the street and get dirty, get wet, speak languages and blend in and vanish in plain sight, and open a one-man can of whup-ass.

We lost that capability a long, long time ago. We lost it when the OSS got atomized.

[brownapple]

Nah, the capability is still around. Remember that the OSS, Raiders, 1st Special Services Force, Ranger Battalions were formed with a selection of people from a variety of civilian concerns and some military and police folks that weren't real popular with the conventional folks in their business.

They're still out there. Just a matter of someone deciding they need a new Donovan to recruit them.

[Jimbo]

Oh, I don't know. The Army guys did a pretty good job of running it in WWII when it was the OSS.

Went back to double check this. The Army never ran OSS. When COI got split into white and black programs, the black half went under the JCS and was renamed OSS. From the git go, DoD opposed the formation of a civilian intelligence organization. Much like the Marines have an institutional fear that Army want to destroy them, CIA fears that DoD would like to take over is mission (and budget).

[Jimbo]

They're still out there. Just a matter of someone deciding they need a new Donovan to recruit them.

From what I have read in select snippits from the Washington Post, it seems that they are indeed out there, but they need more than Donovan to recruit them. Whether the capability we have now, however robust it is, survives long after the 5th anniversary of September 11th will largely depend on someone like Donovan stepping forward to create the reservation Magician is talking about. Right now, organizations that currently provide shelter to the individuals that would move to the reservation see a reservation as an opportunity to build a casino.

[lrd]

Much like the Marines have an institutional fear that Army want to destroy them, CIA fears that DoD would like to take over is mission (and budget).And that's what it seems to come down to -- who gets to control the budget. If I understand it correctly, General Myers' letter wasn't asking for control of national intelligence, he was asking to retain control of the military portion of the budget for intelligence spending. Lawmakers also agree that the conference committee remains divided. A coalition of House Democrats and the bipartisan Senate delegation wants broad powers for a national intelligence director, while House Republicans want to limit those powers.

The House Republicans have a powerful constituency: Pentagon officials, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Richard B. Myers. In a letter last month, General Myers endorsed much of the House bill and said the Pentagon needed to retain much of its control over intelligence spending to support troops on the battlefield. http://www.911independentcommission.org/110804nytimesnegotiators.html

[NousDefionsDoc]

Went back to double check this. The Army never ran OSS. When COI got split into white and black programs, the black half went under the JCS and was renamed OSS. From the git go, DoD opposed the formation of a civilian intelligence organization. Much like the Marines have an institutional fear that Army want to destroy them, CIA fears that DoD would like to take over is mission (and budget).

I know all of that, but look at the people that were running it. From what I have read, the Army's problem with the OSS was that they didn't have complete control over it due to Donovan's relationship with the POTUS. I shouldn't have said Army, I should have said military. Donovan was former military with the MOH, not just some college boy with a theory. He was also recommissioned. He was placed on active duty and promoted to Brigadier General in March 1943 and promoted to Major General in November 1944. So, since Donovan was King and he was Army, I would say the military was running it - albiet not the way they would have liked.

I'm not advocating military take over the CIA. Just the DO. Or do something different, like General Boykin or somebody else from the SOC for DDO.

[NousDefionsDoc]

I agree that the people Magician describes are still out there. They always are. They just need an address of where to report. Every time the call goes out, they come.

[Jimbo]

Donovan was former military with the MOH, not just some college boy with a theory.

HE was. Some of the people he recruited were former Army. Back then, just about everyone had some kind of military experience. Many of his recruits were just some college boys (and girls).

I'm not advocating military take over the CIA. Just the DO. Or do something different, like General Boykin or somebody else from the SOC for DDO.
Sounds like how every XXX has started.

[NousDefionsDoc]

I thought you and I had already discussed group mindset, leadership etc., and were past discussing the muchedumbre? ;)

What is the DO if not an XXX?

[Jimbo]

The PRIMARY job of DO is to clandestinely collect intelligence. A very small part of their mission and responsibilities involve XXX type missions.

Theoretically (of course), it might make sense to consolidate everyone that does clandestine and covert work under one organization and give them the leadership and infrastructure to support that range of missions. Put all the people that analyze the information in another organization. The military, then, would be a customer of those organizations. The military, historically, will point to instances when those kinds of organizations have not supported their mission as a justification of why they need their own capability. Thus competition is born. Competition is usually good, but not when you are competing for a limited budget that is controlled by someone who needs to be reelected and will thus be more inclined to give money to the organization that he would get the most use out of (be it supporting statements he makes or whatever).

[NousDefionsDoc]

I've gone as far as I'm willing to go on this because of OPSEC.

Thanks for the discussion.

[Roguish Lawyer]

Great thread. Thanks.

[Jimbo]

I've gone as far as I'm willing to go on this because of OPSEC.

Thanks for the discussion.

Just FYI that since much of this discussion is theoretical and foreward looking (and since none of us are in a position to influence this) OPSEC should not be too much of a concern.

Just about everything I've discussed is outlined in this paper:

http://www.emergency.com/intel298.htm

http://www.nipp.org/Adobe/rev%20intel%20complete.pdf

[NousDefionsDoc]

Well, I don't want to step the wrong way, and since we are not in a position to influence, its not worth the risk to me.

I'll read the papers later. Thanks for the links.

[magician]

I think that we fundamentally have a structural conflicts that prevent us from creating the type of service that is required.

We could say that professional jealousy plays a role.

The Pentagon would want to run it, but I have no confidence that somewhere along the line, some prick without a clue would come in and muck things up beyond repair.

It is all about human capital. And that would require long-range planning and foresight, investments and commmitments, that we as a nation, and as institutions, just do not do well. Our planning and budget cycles are not compatible with it.

Area orientation and languages are at the core. The ability to move in a foreign culture like a native is the key. America, the great melting pot, should be peerless at this. But we are not.

We have General Abizaid bemoaning the lack of qualified linguists in news articles.

Once you have the cultural and area orientation half of the equation sorted out, and it is not easily done, then you need the martial side. This is more easily handled, as we all here have been through a pipeline, and others exist.

Basically, I think that you need guys who can be one-man A-teams. Guys who you can send as singletons, or in a two-man team. It would take about a decade to get them up to speed. And I think that a lot of them should be women. No one sees a woman coming.

I would think that you would be able to get about ten to twenty years good use out of each guy. They would live primarily overseas, attend foreign universities, work in commercial enterprises overseas, but have sidelines. I suppose that you could consider them a variation of the NOK, but with a lot more longevity. This would be a career path in itself.

As it is right now, the DDO and case officers do business a certain way. I think that it is fundamentally NOT what we require as a nation.

I watch what is happening with the new DCI from afar...and I wonder: maybe someone has an actual new idea?

[Jimbo]

Found this. It is a bit dated (1995), but hits on some central themes. Apparently, the author was an SF officer at one point and also a career analyst in DI. This is from: http://fas.org/irp/gentry/#gentry


No Military Control of Covert Action

The U.S. military should not assume control or conduct of paramilitary covert action, as Robert Gates and some others have proposed (92). I say this for two main reasons: the military cannot handle the job; and, there are major diplomatic and domestic political risks associated with use of uniformed military personnel in such activities. I make these comments as a U.S. Army reservist who has spent most of his military career in intelligence and special operations assignments (93).

The military--despite the elevation of special operations in stature and funding as part of the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 and growing involvement in non-traditional roles--still thinks conventionally. Conventional force commanders run the services and the Joint Staff, despite the elevation of one special operations officer to four star rank as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Special Operations Command. Even though there are personnel who are sophisticated in "operations other than war"--the current term for what once was called low intensity conflict--there is not an adequate base of personnel experience to develop sophisticated plans or conduct sophisticated operations of the scale a president might ask CIA to perform. There is not the money or the time to prepare such forces. The military personnel management system mandates that people, including intelligence officers, rotate too quickly to develop area expertise. Despite some successes, I also doubt that the military could maintain security as well as CIA does. Moreover, the military's success in covert operations in Southeast Asia in the 1960s and 1970s was poor--for reasons that Defense Department reforms have not ameliorated. This subject warrants significant discussion--about these and other issues including CIA's own very mixed record in conducting covert operations--in closed-door sessions.

There are several major political reasons to keep the Defense Department out of covert operations:


It is important to be able to maintain plausible deniability. Use of American citizen-soldiers, poorly able or untrained in concealing their national heritage, sharply reduces our ability to conceal involvement.

Families of soldiers lost in battle are more likely to complain publicly that they sent their loved ones to "defend the country"--not participate in some "dirty" war only tangentially related to America's immediate defense.

Unhappy mothers and wives of servicemen lost in covert actions are much more likely to demand "accountability" than the families of intelligence officers who know the rules of the game. The POW/MIA cottage industry of the post-Vietnam War period is more likely to "reinvent" itself to find soldiers lost in covert actions than it is to seek out missing or dead intelligence operatives or agents.

It seems inevitable that uniformed military involvement in covert operations would raise questions related to the War Powers Act or related questions about whether the nation is at war or at peace. These would increase the likelihood of yet another oxymoronic public debate about the conduct of "covert" action.

Military involvement in covert actions could cause complications with our allies. In particular, it would raise yet more questions about our judgment and concerns about whether treaty terms that require foreign allies to assist each other are in danger of being triggered. Foreign countries may be less willing to ally themselves with us if they sense increased chances of being dragged into a war they do not want.

Use of U.S. soldiers in covert actions reduces our moral authority and our diplomatic assertions that negotiations, multi-national organizational fora, and legal proceedings should be the foundations of conflict resolution.
And, successful covert para-military actions may benefit from or even require the access, sources, and tradecraft of the clandestine service of CIA that the Defense Department cannot match. All of these problems are avoidable through continued separation of the Department of Defense from traditional CIA para-military covert operations.


92. Robert M. Gates, "A Leaner, Keener CIA," The Washington Post, January 30, 1995, p. A15.

93. I graduated from the Special Forces Officer Course and served my active duty tour as executive officer with the 1st Special Forces Group in Okinawa. I spent two months serving in a mildly covert operational training capacity in s outheast Asia in 1972. I did reserve tours with the U.S. Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida and the Army's 1st Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg. I now am Assistant G-2 with the 352d Civil Affairs Command, Riverdale, Maryland. For over ten years, I served in intelligence assignments.

[QRQ 30]

Interesting and probably true today. However, in the beginning when god created Special Forces and saw it was good, the chain of command went through the State Department rather than DoD. We were considered the armed force of the CIA. Special Forces always had a close relationship with the CIA. Please note I didn't say Spevial Operations Forces. The CIDG and other indigenous troops in SEA were paid by the U.S. and the funds diin't come from DoD.

The problem with discussion of operations is that covert needs to stay covert and clandestine needs to stay sclandestine. The less that is known to the public the better. There have been operations in place in the past and also, I presume, today. When they become known evil things happen as with the lynching of Col. Rheault and probably Oliver North.

Any FOGs out there remember Pacific Architechs and Engineers (PA&E)?

[Jimbo]

Any FOGs out there remember Pacific Architechs and Engineers (PA&E)?

You don't have to be too much of a FOG to remember PA&E. They are still operating. Granted, probably not doing the same things, but still providing services to the USG.

[Jimbo]

The Agency is comfortable with its bloated bureaucracy in Northern Virginia.

Very good article on the subject:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/299qznfy.asp?pg=1

From the article:
THE TIME TO START DEMANDING meaningful Agency reform was immediately after 9/11, when passions were high and entrenched bureaucratic habits could more easily have been overcome. It is most unlikely the 9/11 Commission will generate similar heat with its final report. The abysmal espionage apparatus that William Casey presided over was decades in the making. It was in great part structurally foreordained: Not only the promotion system but also the decision to deploy the vast majority of case officers overseas under official cover--posing as U.S. diplomats, military officers, and so on--set in motion a counterproductive psychology and methods of operation that still dominate the CIA today.

The relatively young men who are poised to become the most senior officers of the clandestine service will likely be overwhelmingly from the Near East Division, as was true through much of Casey's tenure. These men gained their professional identites in the 1980s. The odds aren't good that they think it necessary to overturn the structure that promoted them.

[Airbornelawyer]

I tend to believe that greater decentralization may be preferable. After WW2, having one central place to collect and analyze intelligence from widely divergent sources, to see patterns not visible to someone on one side of the elephant, was necessary.

Today, I'm not so sure. The centralized structure shows the ossification of thought characteristis of large bureaucracies, and given the advances in technology, doesn't seem as necessary for collating the info to get the big picture.

In my experience as an operational/tactical-level user, we got much more useful products from smaller shops like ITAC/NGIC and MCIA than we got from DIA or CIA. If I wanted to know about the latest sub-ministerial reshuffling in the Tunisian Ministry of Defense, I could read the MID. If I wanted to know how to defeat ARENA, I went to NGIC. Hell, even for political-military analysis I think there's a group of guys at 4th POG who may be as good as CIA at reading the Iranian or North Korean tea leaves.

Intellink facilitated the networking at the lower levels. Before going to brief the CG, I could pull INTSUMs from EUCOM, TRANSCOM or elsewhere (TRANSCOM has an unusually good shop, since they have to be ahead of the game on any potential crisis area where on a dime the US might need to ship, fly or move men or material).

[magician]

this guy, Gerecht, gets it, I think:

"Yet a concrete discussion is precisely what is needed. Successful espionage operations against al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist organizations would be defined by the efforts of a small group of men who seed themselves into these organizations. Some, probably most, of these men would need to be actual case officers--CIA employees--not foreign agents the CIA has recruited. The complexity of the task, target, and culture demands a level and reliability of information that would come much more easily from case officers acting as jihadists. The CIA will be a serious espionage organization ready for the twenty-first century only when its professional ranks are dominated in numbers and influence by such officers, who operate far away from U.S. embassies and consulates.


The entire system for finding, training, and deploying overseas case officers of this type needs to be completely overhauled. The "farm," the legendary training ground for case officers in the woody swamps of Virginia, ought to be abandoned. It has never had much relevance to the practice of espionage overseas. It is a symbol of the Agency's lack of seriousness. This new cadre needs to be a breed apart. Their operational half-life in the field might be at most ten years. It is hard to imagine them married and with kids. It is also hard to imagine their coming into being unless these jihadist moles are well paid. A starting salary of a quarter of a million dollars a year would be reasonable. Outsiders will know such a change is afoot when there are rumors of case officers' regularly dying abroad."

I agree with his conclusion. It will never happen.

[QRQ 30]

I would disagree with this statement:
It is also hard to imagine their coming into being unless these jihadist moles are well paid. A starting salary of a quarter of a million dollars a year would be reasonable.ad."

There are many people who would do the job without money as the reason. A man who's sole motive is money is likely to be bought off if discovered. In fact there are documented cases of just that. There are two sayings concerning money: 1."Everyone has his price" and "Money is the root of all evil". They are only both true if the first is true.

God knows that money wasn't a motive when I joined Special Forces and I don't think it was for anyone. There are many and various reasons listed in the "Why did you join SF" thread but I don't recall money being one. Men of similar psychological make up are likely recruits as CIA operatives. It is the job and not the pay.


But, I digress from the subject of leadership.

[Jimbo]

It is the job and not the pay.


But, I digress from the subject of leadership.

I don' t think that is too far off the discussion of leadership. I know a number of people who will work for little pay and low job satisfaction if they are working for a good leader. If the leadership is bad and the job satisfaction is moderate to low, the pay is going to have to be high in order to get qualified (or any) people to do the job.

Given that careerism has largely replaced good leadership in much of the government, I don't fault people for wanting a little more cash up front.

[Roguish Lawyer]

Yeah, I catch all kinds of flak from you guys every time I bring up pay increases as part of the solution to anything. I still think that low pay is a reason why people don't enter public service, and that eliminating that disincentive would be prudent.

[QRQ 30]

Yeah, I catch all kinds of flak from you guys every time I bring up pay increases as part of the solution to anything. I still think that low pay is a reason why people don't enter public service, and that eliminating that disincentive would be prudent.

This reminds me of a saying that also probably belongs in the "SF Motto" thread.

:"And to think we actually get paid to do this shit!", or "And to think civilians have to pay to do this shit!", said while suspended from the side of a wind/snow blown cliff, or draging an akio across the frozen tundra, etc.
:D :lifter

[magician]

you know what?

you are right.

I would do it in a heart beat, for little to no money, if the phone rang.

it is either in the heart, or it is not.

[Huey14]

Yeah, I catch all kinds of flak from you guys every time I bring up pay increases as part of the solution to anything. I still think that low pay is a reason why people don't enter public service, and that eliminating that disincentive would be prudent.

Would also eliminate the threat of people being tempted by greed, a la Ames.

[Jimbo]

Would also eliminate the threat of people being tempted by greed, a la Ames.

Ames was not tempted by greed. Ames did what he did because he thought he was superior to everyone around him. His material possessions were a physical manifestation of that. Had it been pure greed, he likely would have asked for more money and hidden it until he could get away and spend it. However, since he thought he was better then everyone else, he never thought he would get caught.

[Huey14]

Alright.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Article (http://www.cincypost.com/2005/01/06/intel010605.html)

Bush's purge at CIA is unwise
By Haviland Smith

Porter Goss, the new CIA director and a devoted political ally of President Bush, has brought with him to Langley a Praetorian Guard from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Against the backdrop of his hands-off management style, they are making it clear, without much tact or subtlety, what their goal is: They have come to shake the place up.

Whatever is going on, it is at the behest of the White House, and it probably does not focus on faulty intelligence about weapons of mass destruction but rather on the conduct of the Iraq war and its aftermath.

In that context, the administration's wrath seems directed toward the clandestine service, that component of the CIA that recruits and handles spies (not the component that publishes intelligence estimates). Since Goss' arrival in Langley, Va., much of the senior management of the clandestine service has been fired or has quit, reportedly to be replaced with more compliant officials.

David Brooks of the New York Times wrote in a vituperative column in mid-November that we were viewing a death struggle between the White House and the CIA. He claimed that the CIA had been trying to contribute to the president's defeat in the election by leaking classified material designed to bolster the idea that the Iraq policy was ill-conceived and going badly.

Apparently, that idea was absolutely correct.

It appears that the CIA, both the clandestine service and the intelligence directorate, had indeed been leaking a wide variety of secrets. They could and should have been prosecuted for the unauthorized disclosure of classified information. They were not. Instead, it appears that the administration has found in their actions a welcome excuse for collective punishment of the CIA.

Given the way the Bush White House has handled intelligence during the past three years, it makes sense that it is angry at the clandestine service. The officers in that service are often required to give their opinions about policies in advance of their implementation.

It is unlikely that any clandestine service officer, having spent a career in the Middle East, would see our current policy there as flawless. Thus many in the White House probably see the clandestine service as a nest of enemies. They might just want to consider an alternative possibility: that the service is made up of professionals who would like to save their country from the further embarrassment and potential difficulties of a truly flawed and dangerous Iraq policy.

Once a year, all CIA station chiefs write a message to the director of central intelligence giving their analysis of how things are going in the country to which they are assigned. These analyses are straightforward and normally show extraordinary understanding of local realities. They contain the kind of candor that, if it were to get unvarnished to a Bush White House or to the media (as the most recent one from Baghdad recently did), would likely infuriate the administration. After all, this is the president who will not acknowledge any shortcomings in either his policy or its outcome in Iraq.

Given his dogged adherence to the righteousness of that policy, it makes sense that the president would be angry with the clandestine service. It seems quite possible that the service is being punished for having been right, or at least unsupportive of administration policy.

The agency's statutory responsibility is to speak the truth, whether the truth supports the president's plans or not. It would appear that this concept is not shared by this administration.

Porter Goss and his troops from the Hill are wreaking havoc on the best current line of defense we have against terrorism. However angry this administration is with the clandestine service, whose officers run human intelligence operations, those operations are the last, best hope we have to keep up with the terrorist problem. Purging the CIA at this unfortunate moment, when we need to be dealing with real issues of terrorism, is cutting off our nose to spite our face.

Haviland Smith is a retired CIA station chief who served in east and west Europe, the Middle East and as chief of the agency's counterterrorism staff.


Publication Date: 01-06-2005

[Surf n Turf]

QRQ 30

For QRO 30 --
The lynching of Col Rheault was probably the beginning of the modern era de-fanging process. (

It wasn’t the pipe smoking, tweed jacketed, Ivy league intel types who (metaphorically ) lynched Bob Rheault. It was a case of fratricide by the trade school boys over control, people, and money. Rumor has it that civilian intervention was the only thing that kept Rheault (in a trailer) outside of LBJ.

Surf n Turf

[Surf n Turf]

NousDefionsDoc

You are trying to equate a bunch of arrogant, Ivy League, bureaucratic, "hang on got my my 30 and Volvo" college boys with my NCO Corps? QUOTE]

[QUOTE=NousDefionsDoc]
The administration is missing its chance to rebuild American intelligence in fundamental ways -- and there is no better time to do it than during a war, as "Wild Bill" Donovan and the OSS showed

Some of the people he recruited were former Army. Back then, just about everyone had some kind of military experience.

Many of his recruits were just some college boys (and girls).


OSS Staffing --- Doc, you sure you want another OSS ??

The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was the major U.S. intelligence agency during WW2. Its research branch consisted largely of conscientious humanities and social science liberals from Harvard and Yale. Their sudden access to international secrets, when mixed with inbred academic elitism, proved quite compelling. By war's end, these opinion-makers had become converts to OSS director William Donovan's vision of a postwar agency. Despite Truman's reluctance, Donovan's old-boy network was formalized into the CIA; the pipe-smoking liberal of the thirties became the cold warrior of the fifties. It wasn't until the 1960s that the academic community would begin to recover its social conscience.

http://www.namebase.org/sources/LY.html

[NousDefionsDoc]

Yes. Not the R&A - the OGs and SI

You think William Casey and Aaron Bank were wimps?

[Jimbo]

http://www.namebase.org/sources/LY.html

Don't ever quote namebase as a source.

[Surf n Turf]

Yes. Not the R&A - the OGs and SI

You think William Casey and Aaron Bank were wimps?

NousDefionsDoc

No, and neither were Allan Dulles, Dick Helms, Bill Colby, and hundreds of other “field” people who made their careers as professionals in the Intelligence community.

My point was probably poorly made --- everyone had generally commented on Operations (i.e. DDO) – the “least broke part of the entire organization” ---- My point was to contrast Operations with the rest of the organization, primarily that of “analysis” (which I believe is broke – big time).

From what I read in the newspapers, I think that it is now pretty clear that CIA does not get operations control, operations planning, tasking, “para-military” staff, etc. ------ BUT, You can’t have an operation without some analysis (hopefully “actionable intelligence” ) that tell’s someone, somewhere, that we need to do something.

I believe that analysis falls under the Intelligence Directorate (DDI) job title, where the collection and evaluation staff, analysts, specialists, researchers, librarians, etc. work, and that is what is most “broken” within the organization.

Granted, since the Carter / Turner “Thanksgiving massacre”, and a less than aggressive hiring program during the last decade, we probably don’t have the sources we need, but with ad’s in every local newspaper we are filling a pipeline. Our methods of collection are probably the best in the world.

From the military side, since Goldwater / Nichols (86), and the restructuring and upgrading of SOCOM, our Operations endeavours have improved significantly, and that responsibility will probably go to DoD.

But, back to my point --- Our Analysis has Not improved, and has probably degraded !!

That’s my story, and I’m stickin’ to it

SnT

[Jimbo]

Namebase is run by people with an agenda. Not too long ago it was nothing more than an effort to prove government conspiracies. They take a dim view of the government in general and intelligence in particular, so choosing what they have chosen to associate with an entity is like relying on Wikipedia for authoritative positions on issues.

[Airbornelawyer]

Namebase is run by people with an agenda. Not too long ago it was nothing more than an effort to prove government conspiracies. They take a dim view of the government in general and intelligence in particular, so choosing what they have chosen to associate with an entity is like relying on Wikipedia for authoritative positions on issues.Namebase relies on questionable (to say the least) second and third-hand sources for many of their associations. Here's an example of one of their quality sources: "Covert Action Information Bulletin began publishing in 1978, and currently issues a well-produced quarterly of about 70 pages with no advertising. Some themes include CIA in academia, the new world order, CIA in Eastern Europe, George Bush, domestic surveillance, CIA and drugs, AIDS, the religious right, and the Nazi-Vatican-CIA nexus."

Namebase is also pathetically and laughably out-of-date.

Namebase also is missing me, despite the fact that I am a known associate of dozens of people who are there.

[Jimbo]

Namebase also is missing me, despite the fact that I am a known associate of dozens of people who are there.

Ditto, thankfully.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Click for a laugh (http://www.sptimes.com/2005/01/09/Perspective/Little_cloak__less_da.shtml)

[Razor]

Sounds like Little Miss Muffett spent too much time watching 'Alias' and not enough time learning to cope with the ugly side of reality.