At Root of Leak Probe Is Prewar Dispute

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CIA-White House Clash Over Intelligence
Set Stage for Fitzgerald's Investigation
JAY SOLOMON
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

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At the root of the investigation into the leaking of the identity of a CIA operative is a feud between the Central Intelligence Agency and the White House over whether top administration officials politicized intelligence information in the buildup to the Iraq war. With charges likely to be filed as early as today, the ripple effects of that feud are still being felt. The same tension over prewar intelligence that led to the leaking of a CIA operative's identity also led to finger-pointing between the agency and the White House and contributed to a decision to reorganize the intelligence community and put the CIA under new White House oversight. Dozens of senior CIA analysts and covert operatives, including the No. 2 at the Directorate of Operations -- the agency's clandestine network -- have in recent months left the Langley, Va., offices, often to higher wages in the private sector.

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Any indictments would be a huge deal ... because they will help restore hope that the system works," said Larry Johnson, a former CIA analyst and counterterrorism official at the State Department.

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"There's been a huge wedge between what the analysts think and what the Bush administration wants them to say," said Michael Scheuer, who headed the CIA's special unit targeting Osama bin Laden before quitting in 2004. Some in the intelligence community have criticized Mr. Bush's promotion of Porter Goss, a former congressman and CIA official, to oversee the restructuring of the CIA. Critics say Mr. Goss brought senior-level aides and an aloof management style that didn't mesh with the CIA's culture, and failed to restore the confidence of the U.S.'s principal intelligence body. Resentment between the CIA and the White House, though, goes back to the earliest days of the Bush administration. The White House -- and some members of Congress -- blamed U.S. intelligence agencies for al Qaeda's Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But even before those strikes, a number of senior White House officials sought to brand the CIA as soft in its analysis and unwilling to offer more clear-cut views on the threats to America.


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The leak case grew out of tensions within the CIA itself, and between the CIA and other parts of the Bush administration, over whether intelligence showed Iraq had or was seeking weapons of mass destruction. The administration used that specter in its justification for invading Iraq. George Tenet, then director of the CIA, in some cases helped assure the White House there was a good case that Iraq had such a weapons program, but some of his own analysts had different conclusions. The dissenting views within the CIA frustrated officials in the Pentagon and White House and led to a feeling during the lead-up to the war that agency analysts were too skeptical of evidence of Iraqi wrongdoing.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB113045918573081985-OxZ92Y8CiAfLWnO_MxaSR6gpv5k_20061027.html?mod=rss_free

[rodeodance]

1. we are losing our senior analyists to the private sector. Not good.

.....including the No. 2 at the Directorate of Operations -- the agency's clandestine network -- have in recent months left the Langley, Va., offices, often to higher wages in the private sector.