CIA still the ultimate authority?
Democrats are getting angry at the CIA. I seem to remember saying something about this during the Scooter Libby trial. Back then, Democrats were pushing the talking point that the CIA knows best when it comes to CIA activities, and I wrote:
The Bush administration will be gone in a few years. The CIA will be here for a lot longer.
Sure enough, here we are a few years later, and the CIA is still with us. As Gabriel Malor writes at the Ace of Spades:
Consider the arrogance of the Democrats, who thought they could use the CIA like a punching bag, secure in the knowledge that the CIA would never dare punch back. What the Democrats failed to consider is that the CIA believes that it should be setting national intelligence policy. That makes it the natural enemy of Congress and the White House, no matter which party is in power.
Chickens. Roost. Home.
- Dems Cry Foul: “The CIA is Out to Get Us!”: Gabriel Malor at Ace of Spades HQ
- “Idiots. As the infamously leaky CIA demonstrated over the past eight years, the intelligence agency is out for itself more than any other objective. The Democrats thought the CIA was an ally against Republicans and they were happy to encourage it's embarrassing tendency to leak. They were right about the means, but wrong about the objective.”
- Who controls discussion of CIA activities?
- When the CIA wins the battle of defining who can and cannot be talked about, there may be a partisan victory in the short run, but in the long run we all lose.