There's a reason Dana Priest is just another prematurely aging writer for the Washington Post --
and George W. Bush is President of the United States.
Silly stuff they write, isn't it? I can only think of one reason why Dick Cheney was staying at undisclosed locations with a small shadow government: a credible threat of a nuclear terrorist attack on the US. If that doesn't justify a massive CIA response, then nothing does. Why do we spend $40 billion annually on intelligence agencies if we're not going to put them to use in a crisis?