Eric Scheie over at Classical Values
has an excellent question about the new National Intelligence Estimate: Does anyone in our intelligence services have a clue? New reports, when they are not so vague as to be useless, contradict each other with little explanation why. Who should be responsible for sorting this out? (Via Instapundit).
The answer: the underlying actors in the NIE fiasco are the intel bureaucrats. From the start, America's intel professionals have scuttled Administration foreign policy; two-and-a-half-years ago, I wrote about attending a party in suburban Maryland:
ReplyDelete"[T]he host -- a government professional working on secret national securities issues -- argued President Bush wrongly rebuffed North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il: who, he insisted, can be trusted."
And the media prints every leak, without considering harm to national security, as John Hinderaker detailed two years ago in The Weekly Standard:
"In one leak after another, generally to the New York Times or the Washington Post, CIA officials have sought to undermine America's foreign policy. Usually this is done by leaking reports or memos critical of administration policies or skeptical of their prospects. Through it all, our principal news outlets, which share the agency's agenda and profit from its torrent of leaks, have maintained a discreet silence about what should be a major scandal.
Recent events indicate that the CIA might even be willing to compromise the effectiveness of its own covert operations, if by doing so it can damage the Bush administration."
Question: Blocking Bush is their current motivation; will the 'crats change their tune under President Hillary?