The CIA's war against the war

Christopher Alleva:

Rowan Scarborough's superb new book Sabotage lays out a boatload of evidence documenting years of serious misconduct, malfeasance and incompetence at the CIA. Excerpted this week at his newspaper, the Washington Examiner, Scarborough's book has plenty of news-breaking revelations that should stimulate an abundance of discussion in the ensuing days.

The book is likely generate a tepid response from the drive-by media. They'll have to acknowledge it because Scarborough is one of the most respected reporters on the national security beat. But they'll do their level best to diminish its importance, mostly by ignoring it. The way Paul Bedard from U.S. News handles it offers a glimpse into the mind of the drive bys on this book. http://www.usnews.com/blogs/washington-whispers/

He calls it an "alternate view of history." Perhaps this is a polite euphemism that let his media brethren save face from their extensive record of defective reporting on this story.

Reporters are ultimately no better than their sources and arguably no reporter is better sourced in national security than Scarborough. The five part series begins describing the war between the CIA and the White House followed by the account of Porter Goss' stormy tenure, marked by a hostile leak campaign intended to discredit Goss and short circuit his effort to depoliticize the agency. The campaign enlisted the Washington Post's Walter Pincus and Dana Priest to do their dirty work planting stories along the lines of these published in early October 2004.

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The sheer ineffectualness of the CIA is truly stunning. We also learn that the situation became so untenable that Army colonel Derek Harvey wrote a paper explaining the problem for a service publication but the paper was never published because General David Petraeus, then commander of the U.S. Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, told him ... it as it was "too damning."

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His account buttresses the allegation that whole Wilson/Plame imbroglio was a deliberate effort by the CIA to sabotage the reelection of President Bush.

In the face of this flagrant insubordination and incompetence, Donald Rumsfeld got the Pentagon into the business of developing actionable intelligence for the War on Terror.

In part 5, Scarborough relates the harrowing tale of Task Force Orange's successful manhunt for Iraq's most wanted man, al Zarqawi. He credits Rumsfeld's resolve to make his special operations forces integral components in America's intelligence efforts against the terrorists. When it became clear the CIA was not up to the job, Rumsfeld moved intelligence gathering in-house. The al-Zarqawi manhunt was the ultimate realization of Rumsfeld's reorganization. Scarborough's give a fascinating account of the operation,

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His account buttresses the allegation that whole Wilson/Plame imbroglio was a deliberate effort by the CIA to sabotage the reelection of President Bush.

In the face of this flagrant insubordination and incompetence, Donald Rumsfeld got the Pentagon into the business of developing actionable intelligence for the War on Terror.

In part 5, Scarborough relates the harrowing tale of Task Force Orange's successful manhunt for Iraq's most wanted man, al Zarqawi. He credits Rumsfeld's resolve to make his special operations forces integral components in America's intelligence efforts against the terrorists. When it became clear the CIA was not up to the job, Rumsfeld moved intelligence gathering in-house. The al-Zarqawi manhunt was the ultimate realization of Rumsfeld's reorganization. Scarborough's give a fascinating account of the operation,

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The piece on the Wilson Plame affair would be worth the price of the book. This is a book that is going to be high on my must read list. It appears that the CIA description as a rogue left wing agency will be secure with this book.