Speaking of intelligence

Updated The Christian Science Monitor's valuable Daily Update for June 15 says that

reform, major reform, of the CIA is in the air.

The question isn't whether there will be changes at the premier US spy agency, but whether they will be as extensive as the Church Committee reforms of 1975 the last great overhaul of the agency.

Two reports expected to be sharply critical of the agency are due shortly; coming in the wake of the "incidents of terrorism" debacle, the spooks are braced for the worst.

The first shot will be the long-delayed report of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is expected to savage the CIA's performance on prewar intelligence on Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction. That should be followed next month by the 9/11 Commission's report, which is also expected to excoriate the folks at Langley. Some have even suggested that George Tentative resigned in order to get out while the getting was good so that he could claim boilerplate "personal reasons" rather than it being obvious he was driven out for screwups.

I can't help but wonder, though, if the White House is not secretly delighted over this turn of events, where all the blame for prewar failures is to be laid on the backs of the CIA.

But remember, it wasn't the CIA that was listening to Ahmed Chalabi's fairy tales, it was the White House, it was Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Feith, and the so-called Office of Special Plans they set up specifically to do an end run around the intelligence community. In fact, the CIA didn't trust Chalabi.

It wasn't the CIA that was peddling bogus stories about yellow cake uranium going from Nigeria to Iraq, it was the White House, even though it likely knew the story was false. In fact, Tenet was responsible for getting the reference removed from one of Bushleague's speeches.

It was, however, the CIA that was continually pressured to get in line, to get with the program, to shade it's findings to fit White House propaganda, to turn "maybe" and "possibly" into "assuredly" and "certainly," to ignore its own findings that the information was unreliable. The pressure included visits by Cheney to CIA headquarters, something one agent called "unprecedented."

Yet now we are, it seems, to be told that actually it was all the fault of the CIA's stupidity and the White House gang was merely the innocent victim of its incompetence.

All this, I'm sure, widened the grins and deepened the relieved sighs across GOPperland that began when the 9/11 Commission indicated that in the spirit of bipartisanship - which really meant in the reality of partisanship - it was not going to criticize individuals in its report, it was going to focus on that old dodge, "systematic failures." Blame spread to "system," to "failures of communication," to "structural deficiencies," that let actual people off the hook.

It might at first sight seem odd that this would be a relief; after all, there is certainly enough blame to go around and Clinton administration people would come in for their share of - perhaps even the majority of - lashings, which should delight the rightists.

But just remember: The Clinton administration is not running for office right now. The Bush crew is. And that is a very real difference.

Footnote, Makes You Wonder Div.: One of the stories the Daily Update links to is an interview in the June 14 Salon with intelligence expert Thomas Powers.

Powers suggests there is a hidden but major struggle going on between the White House and Pentagon on the one hand and the CIA on the other that has affected things in Iraq. He notes that Ahmed Chalabi was the fair-haired boy of the war hawks, some of who, for example Richard Perle, still insist what we should have done was turn Iraq over to him immediately. He was the favorite of the Pentagon/White House team. His star declined as it developed that contrary to his assertions, he had no base of support within Iraq, but still he was a prominent member of the Iraqi Governing Council, his group still receiving $340,000 a month in funding from the DOD.

But then came the raid on his office, the accusations of spying for Iran, the resulting undoing of his public position - which were undertaken by the CIA. Chalabi and his supporters have even been excluded from the interim government, one that at one time he expected to head.

And who now occupies the office of prime minister, the most powerful office in the interim government? Why, Iyad Allawi - the CIA's boy, who they turned to when they soured on Chalabi.

So was this a sort of backhanded coup by the CIA against the DOD and White House? Was it payback for their manipulation of Tenet and agency analyses to advance their agenda? Does it show a deep and potentially dangerous divide? I don't know. But it does make for interesting speculation and in the context of persistent reports of bad blood between the two sides generated by the Bushites insistence that facts be bent to fit perceptions, it frankly make sense that there was more to this than what meets the proverbial eye.

Oh, and shed no tears for Chalabi. He's busily trying to build a new power base.