Remember the CIA Purge, late 2004?

[deminks]

In looking at the CIA tape timeline at TPM here


http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004872.php

I remembered that Tenet left on June 3 of 2004 under a surprise announcement (along with the director of operations):

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5129314/



Then, there was a purge of the CIA:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45940-2005Jan3.html

Dubious Purge at the CIA

Porter Goss, the new CIA director and a devoted political ally of President Bush, has brought with him to Langley a Praetorian Guard from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Against the backdrop of his hands-off management style, they are making it clear, without much tact or subtlety, what their goal is: They have come to shake the place up.

Whatever is going on, it is at the behest of the White House, and it probably does not focus on faulty intelligence about weapons of mass destruction but rather on the conduct of the Iraq war and its aftermath. In that context, the administration's wrath seems directed toward the clandestine service, that component of the CIA that recruits and handles spies (not the component that publishes intelligence estimates). Since Goss's arrival in Langley, much of the senior management of the clandestine service has been fired or has quit, reportedly to be replaced with more compliant officials.

David Brooks of the New York Times wrote in a vituperative column in mid-November that we were viewing a death struggle between the White House and the CIA. He claimed that the CIA had been trying to contribute to the president's defeat in the election by leaking classified material designed to bolster the idea that the Iraq policy was ill-conceived and going badly. Apparently, that idea was absolutely correct.

It appears that the CIA, both the clandestine service and the intelligence directorate, had indeed been leaking a wide variety of secrets. They could and should have been prosecuted for the unauthorized disclosure of classified information. They were not. Instead, it appears that the administration has found in their actions a welcome excuse for collective punishment of the CIA.

(end snip)

Was the purge related to the tapes? was (slam dunk)Tenet's resignation? Was the purge related to the WH ordering the destruction of the tapes? I am just thinking outloud here. IIRC.

[Virginia Dare]

1. It's not a far-fetched conclusion..

I do know that the deliberate outing of Valerie Plame could not have set well with anybody at Langley, where there was already most likely a lot of rancor towards the Bush Administration for making them take the fall for 9/11, and for the coerced manipulation of intelligence going into the invasion of Iraq.

The White House is apparently too stupid or too arrogant, or maybe both, to realize that they pissed off the wrong crew. It's definitely going to come back to bite them before it's all over.

[TomInTib]

2. I think you're right on the money.

By releasing (by whatever manner) those personnel, they have bought silence at least in the short term.

And by the time that this era's Phillip Agee surfaces, the BFEE will be insulated by time.

[bleever]

3. Good catch.

leveymg's post backs this up: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2455668

[deminks]

6. So, it wasn't what they told during torture, it's what they didn't remember after torture.

Good god. They don't remember who paid them, most assuredly.

[bleever]

7. And Tenet had to go,

because he would have had a serious motivation to keep his own ass covered, so they could bring in Goss and other non-agency types who would handle the evidence according to the administrations wishes.

[blm]

4. Bush wanted any agent suspected of supporting Kerry gone. Remember when Kerry attacked Bush

since Jan2002 on ToraBora? On Abu Ghraib and calling for Rumsfeld's firing in 2003-4? On the munitions that were stolen in Iraq?

Especially on ToraBora which was a key attack for Kerry for over two years - the only way Kerry could have known about it was from high agents or military men privvy to the details.

That Kerry was the ONLY Democratic officeholder pursuing Bush on ToraBora that entire time was pathetic. Wes Clark wasn't even a Dem lawmaker or spokesperson in 2003 and he joined in on ToraBora. Where were the prominent Dem voices?

[maddezmom]

5. I think you're on to something, also Goldsmith's opinion on Yoo's opinions

~snip~

Jack Goldsmith was confirmed to be head of OLC in October 2003. He was a loyal Republican and supporter of the President. And yet almost as soon as he took office, he began reviewing much of John Yoo's handiwork, and found it lacking. Barely two months into his new job, for instance, Goldsmith called the Pentagon and told them that they must immediately cease relying on the critical Yoo Opinion that formed the basis for the Department of Defense's absuive interrogation policies in Iraq and elsewhere. (I've reviewed this fascinating story in detail here.)

According to Comey, "there were a number of issues that was looking at" as part of his "reevaluation" of past OLC advice, and the NSA program "was among those issues" under OLC review. "Demanding that the White House stop using what they saw as farfetched rationales for riding rough-shod over the law and the Constitution, Goldsmith and the others fought to bring government spying and interrogation methods within the law. They did so at their peril." (The quotation from the best account yet of this basic story -- the article in Newsweek in February 2006 by Daniel Klaidman, Stuart Taylor and Evan Thomas. That article obviously owes a great deal of debt to partial accounts published earlier by, e.g., the New York Times and this blog. Nevertheless, it is a taut, comprehensive and compelling account of what might be the most revealing aspect of the legal crisis within the Executive branch during the past six years. It is well worth reading.)

By early March 2004, OLC apparently concluded that the NSA electronic surveillance program could not be defended on the basis of OLC's prior legal opinions, and had convinced the Attorney General and DAG that DOJ had to refuse to sign off on the program -- i.e., they were compelled to inform the President that the program violated FISA and could not legally be continued in its present form. Ashcroft and Comey agreed -- or at the very least, they deferred to Goldsmith's legal judgment, which is what happens in 99% of all cases once OLC speaks.

It is extremely rare for OLC to reverse its own opinions within an Administration. And that unusual course would be especially disfavored in this case, because all the relevant DOJ officials -- e.g., Ashcroft, Comey, and Goldsmith -- undoubtedly understood that repudiation of this particular OLC advice would mean shutting down the very program that the President had described as the most important intelligence program in the war on terror. Moreover, the theory that OLC was repudiating appears to have been one to which the Vice President and his counsel were deeply committed, and one that appears to have formed the basis for the Administration's decision to disobey other important statutory constraints. Obviously, then, there were profound disincentives to such repudiation.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2456273

[Richard Steele]

8. Kicked and recommended

[Mnemosyne]

9. Needs more visibilty.

:kick: and Rec!

[L. Coyote]

10. How does this relate to the recent conflict with the CIA IG?

[Stinky The Clown]

11. Do I remember? You betcha, I remember!!

Porter Goss' Night of the Long Knives served ***no*** one but Bushco.