Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Broken Up and Salvaged for Parts

Jack Kelly doesn't think that the leadership change at CIA means the president has lost his struggle with the CIA (and why don't liberals think it is absurd for there to be a struggle as if the CIA was an independent actor and not a servant of the elected president?):



Negroponte and Goss reportedly quarreled over Negroponte's plan to move much of the CIA's analysis function to a joint center that would report directly to him. This would permit Negroponte to pluck the analysts that are worth a damn from the CIA, leaving the deadwood to moulder.

Currently Negroponte's deputy, Gen. Hayden was for five years head of the National Security Agency, where he established the NSA intercept program. The leak hunt will continue.

And Gen. Hayden likely will transfer to the Defense department responsibility for paramilitary operations, where it has always belonged. In short, the CIA under Gen. Hayden will shrink to the size warranted by its current performance, not its past pretensions.


I don't have much knowledge about the CIA to really comment on its inner workings. And I sure don't know nearly enough to judge the reasons for the change.

But the CIA is in need of a purge, from what I can see.

So I hope Kelly is right on this.