|
Spy Agency Fiasco
Three former CIA directors have privately told their successor he had his facts wrong when he revealed an illegal assassination program, reports Joseph Finder, and his spies will suffer for it.CIA Director Leon Panetta stunned Washington earlier this summer by disclosing, in an emergency closed-door briefing to Congress, that for the last eight years, the agency he now runs illegally concealed a secret terrorist-assassination program. The reaction was predictably explosive. The House intelligence-oversight committee launched a major investigation. Here was official confirmation, from the very top, that the CIA in the Bush years had been flagrantly and systematically violating the National Security Act of 1947. But according to a half-dozen sources, including several very senior, recently retired CIA officials, clandestine-service officers, and Cabinet-level officials from the Bush administration, the real story is at once more innocent--Panetta was mistaken; no law was broken--and far more troubling: an inexperienced CIA director, unfamiliar with how his vast, complicated agency works, unable to trust senior officials within his own agency, and desperate to keep his hands clean, screwed up. Absolutely in-f*cking-credible. Panetta must go. Now. What good would that do? Posted by: Spot 2009-08-18 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=276901 |