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Think back, for example, to those vengeful days in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and the macho approach being modeled by President Bush and aped down the line by CIA operatives and their "agents of influence."
CIA operative Gary Schroen told National Public Radio that, just days after 9/11, counterterrorism chief Cofer Black sent him to Afghanistan with orders to "Capture bin Laden, kill him, and bring his head back in a box on dry ice." As for other al Qaeda leaders, Black reportedly said, "I want their heads up on pikes."
This quaint tone--and language--reverberated among Bush-friendly pundits. One consummate insider, Washington Post veteran Jim Hoagland went a bit overboard in publishing a letter to President Bush on Oct. 31, 2001. It was no Halloween prank. Rather, Hoagland strongly endorsed what he termed the "wish" for "Osama bin Laden's head on a pike," which he claimed was the objective of Bush's "generals and diplomats."
At the same time, there are dangers in sharing too much information with pet insider/outsiders. In his open letter to Bush, Hoagland lifted the curtain on the actual neoconservative game plan by giving Bush the following ordering of priorities.
"The need to deal with Iraq's continuing
accumulation of biological and chemical weapons and the technology to build a
nuclear bomb can in no way be lessened by the demands of the Afghan campaign.
You must conduct that campaign so that you can pivot quickly from it to end the
threat Saddam Hussein's regime poses."
Thus, Hoagland surfaced the "pivot" plan three weeks before Donald Rumsfeld called Gen. Tommy Franks to tell him the President wanted him to shift focus to Iraq. Franks and his senor aides had been working on plans for attacks on Tora Bora where bin Laden was believed to be hiding, but attention, planning, and resources were abruptly diverted toward Iraq. And Osama bin Laden walked out of Tora Bora through the mountain passes to Pakistan, according to a recent Senate Foreign Relations Committee report.
The point here is that some media favorites are extremely well briefed partly because they are careful not bite the hands that feed them by criticizing the CIA. Still less are they inclined to point out basic structural faults--not to mention the crimes of recent years. So it is up to those of us who know something about intelligence and how structural faults, above-the-law mentality, and flexible consciences can spell disaster.
Split Up the Agency
Here's what should be done.
Expunge the one sentence in the National Security Act of 1947 that gives a President wide latitude to direct the CIA to perform "other such functions and duties related to intelligence." Make it crystal clear that the sense conveyed by that sentence, whether the sentence itself stays in or is deleted, cannot authorize activities that violate international or U.S. criminal law--crimes like kidnapping and torture.
"Other such functions and duties?" What was meant by this wording were activities additional to what President Truman describes in his op-ed as the "original assignment" of the CIA--a central place with access to all collection that enables analysts to advise the President with candor, without department "treatment" or interpretations, and not sparing him "unpleasant facts" so as not to "upset" him.
As Truman himself suggests, terminate "other such functions and duties" or put those operations elsewhere.
And imagine into existence different, effective ways to exercise oversight, not totally dependent on the highly politicized "overlook" committees of the Congress.
That done, there will still be a baby NOT to be thrown out with the bath water.
The good news is that there remains a core of analysts willing and able to seek truth and speak truth to power. This was shown in 2007, when Tom Fingar, a senior analyst with integrity and courage, led to conclusion a National Intelligence Estimate that helped prevent the attack that Dick Cheney, the neoconservatives, and Israel were planning on Iran.
That NIE assessed with high confidence that Iran had ceased working on the warhead-related part of its nuclear program in the fall of 2003--a judgment that holds to this day, however unpopular and unwelcome it may be among those who would have the President give Israel carte blanche to strike Iran's nuclear facilities.
