Just what the CIA needs: a leader even more partisan and responsive to the president’s wishes.
The fact that it’s an apparent pay-off for one of the administration’s ringers on the 9/11 commission — and before the report is even out — is appparently an added bonus.
NBC is reporting that the former Navy Secretary John Lehman is now the lead contender to replace George Tenet as DCI.
This is the central issue in the debate we’re going to be hearing in the coming weeks about ‘reform’ of the CIA and its sister intelligence agencies. The folks in position to guide ‘reform’ are intent on accentuating the problems that led to the existing problems — principally, further politicization and an elevation of ideologues over intelligence professionals. In short, a more thoroughgoing ‘disciplining’ of the Agency by the present administration, step one of Cheneyization.
