Author Thomas Powers, an expert on U.S. spy agencies, wonders who will take the rap for 9/11 and the "horrific, calamitous" mistake in Iraq.
While the nation's attention is focused on the slow-motion deterioration of Iraq, the White House for months has been at war on the home front -- clashing repeatedly with the CIA in a rare series of public disagreements. They've fought over intelligence that seemed to predict the 9/11 terrorist attacks. They've fought over whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. They've fought over a seemingly vindictive White House leak that identified an undercover CIA agent.
According to Thomas Powers, a widely respected authority on the nation's spy business, that conflict has put the CIA -- and U.S. national security -- in peril.
"I think the agency is in terrible shape because of this," Powers told Salon in an interview. "It appears now that the CIA is actually incapable of operating in a hostile environment. It's afraid."
Powers is the author of "Intelligence Wars: American Secret History From Hitler to Al Qaeda." He says that the CIA, facing a demoralized rank and file and a lack of resources, is being effectively hamstrung by the Bush administration and compromised in its job of protecting national security. A big part of the danger is that U.S. intelligence, in the hands of an administration that views foreign policy through its own self-serving lens, has lost not just its autonomy, but essential assets. With the administration's focus shifting to the invasion earlier this year, crucial intelligence resources needed to battle al-Qaida around the globe -- as well as those now needed to secure and stabilize Iraq -- have been squandered.
"We have practically nobody who can speak the language ," Powers says. "We're running the country with teenagers carrying machine guns."(snip)
"This
is more manufactured, more deliberate and more coldblooded. And it was done in plain sight. The whole world was watching and saying, 'No!'" he says. "My own feeling is we've embarked on a horrific, calamitous mistake in Iraq. We're already in a situation we have very little control over and very little ability to get out of, without leaving everything much worse off."
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http://salon.com/news/feature/2003/11/08/powers/index.html