CIA mission high risk? Perish the thought!
And messy? Well, leaping lizards!
It shouldn't be long before rabid dogs are given a place of honor, right next to J Effin Kerry, Dick the turbin Durbin, BJ Clintoon, etal.
Posted on 04/20/2006 2:26:09 AM PDT by edpc
Author James Risen won the Pulitzer Prize on Tuesday for his much ballyhooed New York Times report last December that revealed President Bush's previously secret terrorist surveillance program - a revelation he uncovered while researching his book "State of War."
In the same book, however, Risen makes an equally explosive claim about President Clinton's relationship with the CIA - which his editors at the Times have so far declined to cover.
Upon taking power in 1993, Risen reports, the Clinton administration "began slashing the intelligence budget in search of a peace dividend, and Bill Clinton showed almost no interest in intelligence matters."
The agency cutbacks combined with presidential disinterest took their toll almost immediately.
"Over a three-or-four-year period in the early-to-mid 1990s," reports Risen, "virtually an entire generation of CIA officers - the people who had won the Cold War - quit or retired. One CIA veteran compared the agency to an airline that had lost all of is senior pilots . . . " After Clinton CIA Director John Deutch cashiered several senior officers over a scandal in Guatamala, the situation got even worse.
"Morale [at the CIA] plunged to new lows, and the agency became paralyzed by an aversion to high-risk espionage operations for fear they would lead to political flaps. Less willing to take big risks, the CIA was less able to recruit spies in dangerous places such as Iraq."
The Clinton era of risk aversion also hobbled CIA efforts to get Osama bin Laden. In early 1998, Risen says, the agency was prepared to launch a special operation to kidnap the al Qaeda chief in Afghanistan.
"To be sure the operation was high risk, and there was a strong possibility that it would be so messy that bin Laden would be killed rather than captured. [CIA Director George] Tenet and the CIA's lawyers worried deeply about that issue; they believed the covert action finding on al Qaeda that President Clinton had signed authorized only bin Laden's capture, not his death."
Frustrated by restrictions that made dealing with the big challenges too difficult, the agency turned its energy to lesser problems. Reports Risen: "Thanks to Vice President Al Gore, for example, the CIA briefly made the global environment one of is priorities."
Talk about cherry-picking intelligence.
Would love to hear Rush say tomorrow, "And this from our 'ol buddies over at NewsMax.com..."
L
I knew the CIA was ineffective and politically driven but never knew why. This looks like the reason. Chalk up one more disaster for the Clinton administration.
Hey Carl, that sure sounds like more than 10%.
Isn't John Deutch on the Clinton body-count list?
Just think, had we elected Al Gore President while we would now be on our way to becoming an Islamic country speaking Arabic, the air would be pristine!
FYI
The leftist are now giving the credit to the CIA, whose estimates were 200% and more off.
And then they hired the bimbos like Valerie Pflame. Maybe she is an environmentalist too.
CIA mission high risk? Perish the thought!
And messy? Well, leaping lizards!
It shouldn't be long before rabid dogs are given a place of honor, right next to J Effin Kerry, Dick the turbin Durbin, BJ Clintoon, etal.
Former CIA official Robert Baer noted in His book "Sleeping with the Devil" the almost non-existent presence of the CIA in the Middle East during the nineteen nineties. And when he arrived in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, late in the decade he was the first CIA agent to visit the location in many years. Gates, Deutsch and Tenet have all been disasters. But what the Hell, the FBI isn't much better. And the State Department is loaded with opportunists and cowards. The American people have not been well served by the intelligence agencies, and I would suggest it is time for Porter Goss to issue a report on his effort to clean his Augean Stable.
The more we learn, the more the Clinton administration demonstrates the utter cluelessness and fecklessness of the Democrats, even relatively moderate Democrats, on matters in any way affecting national security. It's impossible to say whether Clinton or Carter was worse.
'Nuff said.
If the focus moves from Eastern European to the Middle Eastern, Far Eastern, and Asia Minor languages ... that is a signal.
Bill Clinton; We can kill them tomorrow!
This is news?
I hate tobe the one to bring this up , but when George bush took over he didnt do anything to clean out this nest of Clinton leftovers. In fact he still hasnt done a hell of a lot.
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