Initial differences

Last Wednesday I mentioned that the White House is suppressing a report on 9/11 by the Inspector General of the CIA, apparently because it names names.

It now develops, according to today's New York Times, that

[t]he director of central intelligence has asked the C.I.A.'s inspector general to modify a draft report on the Sept. 11 attacks to avoid drawing conclusions about whether individual C.I.A. officers should be held accountable for any failures, Congressional and intelligence officials said Monday.

In other words, new CIA chief honcho Porter Goss wants to turn this into another boilerplate "structural failures - breakdown in communications" reports that puts the onus for any failures or screwups in the vague hands of an ill-defined "system" instead of laying any of it on actual human beings.

An intelligence official said that Mr. Goss had requested only that [CIA Inspector General John] Helgerson "consider" making changes in the "formatting and presentation" of the draft report as he believed appropriate. "Ultimately, it is the call of I.G. to decide how to proceed," the intelligence official said.

Right. One of the people you report to wants you to "consider" changes. But it's only a suggestion, strictly up to you. No pressure.

Was that CIA or CYA?