Musings on the State of the CIA : NO QUARTER: "...Folks, this is amateur hour. CIA leaders share the part of the blame in my book. They are not demanding a functional, solid cover. They are not setting a high bar for operational tradecraft. It is shoddy and sloppy and, when people die in the line of duty, their deaths end up exposing their surviving colleagues to greater risk. But Presidents also are to blame. Obama’s public statement was a rookie mistake. I don’t think he was intentionally trying to hurt the CIA but his intent does not matter. That damage was done. In fact, the White House has been regularly leaking over the course of the last year about the successes of CIA drone strikes in Pakistan. So much for covert and clandestine. This White House knows only politics and personal survival.
Don’t kid yourself that things were better under Bush and Cheney. Those two, but especially Cheney, spent a lot of time browbeating CIA officers for not kow towing to the White House vision of reality. When CIA initially reported there was no basis to the claim that Iraq bought yellowcake uranium and was crafting a bomb the White House insisted the CIA was wrong and told them to keep looking. When Gary Berntsen asked urgently for reinforcements to corner Osama Bin Laden he was denied because the Bush White House was too busy prepping to go to war in Iraq. When the CIA Chief of Station in Iraq warned of an emerging insurgency he was fired after pressure from Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who insisted we were only facing a few dead enders. ..."
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