CIA director Porter Goss has issued new rules clamping down on dissent among former CIA employees whose writings are subject to CIA review. Goss, a Bush loyalist who headed the House intelligence committee before taking the reins at the CIA, has been accused of instituting a purge of administration critics within the agency and has apparently now set his sights on external critics as well.
Publications from former CIA employees with current agency contracts are always vetted by the agency to ensure no classified information is revealed. Now, though, their work is inspected and can be killed for comments that don’t involve classified information but “impair the individual’s ability to do his or her job or the CIA’s ability to conduct its mission as a nonpartisan, nonpolicy agency of the executive branch.”
Translated, that means former employees with contracts can be prevented from publishing anything CIA censors think reflects poorly on the agency or the administration.
The new rules come at a time when, according to the Washington Post, White House officials have “barraged the agency with questions about the political affiliations of some of its senior intelligence officers.” (BTC News White House writer Eric Brewer asked about this in a recent press briefing; Scott McLellan had never heard of such a thing.) Taken in tandem, the actions suggest that, contrary to the assertion that they’re intended to bolster the agency’s credentials as “a nonpartisan, nonpolicy agency of the executive branch,” they’re part of an effort to transform the CIA into exactly that: an extension of the White House designed to produce intelligence that bolsters White House policy goals while squelching honest analysis.
Former CIA employees and current ones had uniformly negative views of the new rules.
Former officials who have been contacted by the CIA or made aware of the policy warned that it could backfire. “If this is the direction in which it’s going … the agency would be shooting itself in the foot,” said one former official who was involved in contracting with outside experts to solicit reviews of draft intelligence assessments. “At a time when the agency is being criticized at least as much as it ever has for ‘groupthink,’ unchallenged assumptions, and not practicing alternative analysis rigorously, this is one of the last changes it ought to be making.”
The former official predicted, “Those contractors who tend to express opposing viewpoints would be among the first to terminate their contracts.” If they bolt, the agency’s efforts will have been for naught: The CIA will have lost them, and they’ll publish their writings anyway, because the new policy review doesn’t apply to former employees who don’t have CIA contracts, the former official explained.
Another former official under contract, who has written critically about intelligence analysis, said the policy would encourage people to share their views with journalists anonymously. “I know they did it to scare people,” the former official said. “The problem is, they’re not dealing with fools here…. In my case, they took someone who is reasonably familiar with [the CIA] and made it so that anytime I can torpedo them, I will.” [emphasis mine]
The practical impact of the new rules, and the apparent desire of the White House to flag employees who might harbor Democratic sympathies, could be grizzly. White House and Pentagon officials were furious over dissenting analyses about Iraq’s banned weapons capabilities during the runup to the invasion of Iraq; they not only ignored those analysyes, but took pains to discredit them while cherry-picking supportive intelligence.
Now, together with Goss, they appear to be taking measures aimed at ensuring such dissent doesn’t arise at all. In the immediate term, the White House policy most dangerously affected will be that surrounding Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. No cherry-picking required; it’ll be all cherries, all the time.
And of course there’s another dimension to the new policies: as Steve Clemons points out at the Washington Note, Goss swore an oath to uphold the Constitution. And the Constitution guarantees the right to free speech. That right may officially end at the point of revealing classified information, but it doesn’t preclude criticizing Bush administration policies or CIA practices.
That’s the stuff of police states. We’ve already gone way too far down that road; we certainly don’t need to go any farther, and neither is there any pressing need to screw the CIA up any more than it already is.
CIA clamps down on criticism and dissent
CIA director Porter Goss has issued new rules clamping down on dissent among former CIA employees whose writings are subject to CIA review. Goss, a Bush loyalist who headed the House intelligence committee before taking the reins at the CIA, has been accused of instituting a purge of administration critics within the agency and has apparently now set his sights on external critics as well.
Publications from former CIA employees with current agency contracts are always vetted by the agency to ensure no classified information is revealed. Now, though, their work is inspected and can be killed for comments that don’t involve classified information but “impair the individual’s ability to do his or her job or the CIA’s ability to conduct its mission as a nonpartisan, nonpolicy agency of the executive branch.”
Translated, that means former employees with contracts can be prevented from publishing anything CIA censors think reflects poorly on the agency or the administration.
The new rules come at a time when, according to the Washington Post, White House officials have “barraged the agency with questions about the political affiliations of some of its senior intelligence officers.” (BTC News White House writer Eric Brewer asked about this in a recent press briefing; Scott McLellan had never heard of such a thing.) Taken in tandem, the actions suggest that, contrary to the assertion that they’re intended to bolster the agency’s credentials as “a nonpartisan, nonpolicy agency of the executive branch,” they’re part of an effort to transform the CIA into exactly that: an extension of the White House designed to produce intelligence that bolsters White House policy goals while squelching honest analysis.
Former CIA employees and current ones had uniformly negative views of the new rules.
The practical impact of the new rules, and the apparent desire of the White House to flag employees who might harbor Democratic sympathies, could be grizzly. White House and Pentagon officials were furious over dissenting analyses about Iraq’s banned weapons capabilities during the runup to the invasion of Iraq; they not only ignored those analysyes, but took pains to discredit them while cherry-picking supportive intelligence.
Now, together with Goss, they appear to be taking measures aimed at ensuring such dissent doesn’t arise at all. In the immediate term, the White House policy most dangerously affected will be that surrounding Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. No cherry-picking required; it’ll be all cherries, all the time.
And of course there’s another dimension to the new policies: as Steve Clemons points out at the Washington Note, Goss swore an oath to uphold the Constitution. And the Constitution guarantees the right to free speech. That right may officially end at the point of revealing classified information, but it doesn’t preclude criticizing Bush administration policies or CIA practices.
That’s the stuff of police states. We’ve already gone way too far down that road; we certainly don’t need to go any farther, and neither is there any pressing need to screw the CIA up any more than it already is.