Representative Peter King has a good New York Post op-ed,
"THE CIA LEAK: ROGUE AGENCY?". The theme:
My concern is about something far more ominous. It is what I see to be a systematic
pattern of conduct being carried out by elements within the Central Intelligence Agency
constituting a virtual covert operation against the Bush White House - a covert
operation designed to protect the spy agency's turf and deflect charges of incompetence.
It isn't just the Wilson affair: the CIA has been busy leaking to try to cover up its
mistakes ever since its failure in 9-11. I don't know if it's just the desire to cover
up one's own mistakes, or policy disagreement with the Bush Administration, but in
either case the CIA is showing it needs drastic reform.
Note, too, that Bush's niceness and attempt to be bipartisan, here shown by his retention of Clinton appointee Tenet to head the CIA, is again shown to be a mistake. President Bush seems to be a tit-for-tat player: he starts out behaving nicely, as if there is a clean slate, and only becomes fierce if the other player is fierce first. That has worked noticeably badly with the Democrats, who see niceness as just acknowledgement of the natural law that everyone ought to be nice to those who deserve it, a group which includes Democrats and excludes Republicans. Of course, it worked badly with the Moslem World too. Bush did then reciprocate with fierceness against Afghanistan and Iraq (interestingly, Iraq was more of a pre-emptive attack), but he hasn't gone after the Democrats with full vigor yet.
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