CYA at the CIA

the cia 'leak' investigation didn't paint many people in a good light....
of course scooter libby and some adminstration officials, wilson's story has been undercut, the overzealous media, but most disturbingly, the CIA continues its record of incompetence.

NY Post's Deborah Orin invokes the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan who remarked about the CIA's "unbroken record of missing what's happening." these failures include the fall of the Soviet Union, 9/11, the "slam dunk case" of WMD.

however more troubling is the CIA's tendency towards 'revisionism' in order to paint itself in a more positive light.

But then, all this came at a time when the CIA division where Wilson's wife worked had an intense need to cover its rear: Remember — they were the ones who (along with every other intel agency in the world) had insisted that Saddam had WMDs — but no WMDs were being found.

Having Wilson go public was very useful to the CIA, especially the division where his wife worked — because it served to shift blame for failed "slam dunk" intelligence claims away from the agency. To say that Bush "twisted" intelligence was to presume — falsely — that the CIA had gotten it right.

victoria toensing, a former chief counsel for the Senate Intelligence Committee, catalogs the questionable role [bugmenot login]of the CIA in the whole Plame Affair: nepotism, unqualified agent, nonexistent oversight, it goes on and on. toensing sums up:

The CIA conduct in this matter is either a brilliant covert action against the White House or inept intelligence tradecraft.

in any case, the CIA is crippled going forward