CIA Housecleaning Continues

Now it’s the agency’s deputy director for intelligence, Jami Miscik, who has been forced out by Porter Goss. This is good news, I think; the previously announced departures have focused on operations, but the agency’s most obvious failings in recent years have been in intelligence.
Miscik has only held her post since 2002, so she can’t be blamed for the CIA’s most notorious errors in regard to Iraq. Nevertheless, Goss obviously thinks the situation has not been improved sufficiently, and putting his own person in charge of intelligence is an important part of his effort to retool the agency.
The liberal media are doing some hand-wringing over Goss’s changes at the CIA, but there’s not much they can say in view of their own relentless (and often unfair) criticisms of the agency over the last several years. Thus, the New York Times is reduced to writing that Goss’s changes “have prompted unease within the C.I.A.” Yes, I’ll bet they have. The Washington Post goes a bit further, citing “concerns among some lawmakers and others that Goss was purging intelligence professionals and replacing them with political appointees.” Those “others” presumably include the career CIA Democrats who constantly leak anti-administration tidbits to the Post. For the moment, at least, the leakers seem to be unusually quiet. I wonder why.

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