C.I.A. as Polonius
Nov. 19th, 2004 06:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
semiotic_piratemirror mirror on the wall, who's the greatest/smartest/most magnificent leader of them all?
www.registerguard.com | © The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon
November 19, 2004
A window, not a mirror: President needs truth-tellers, not sycophants
A Register-Guard Editorial
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is worried by the direction that Porter Goss, the CIA's new director, is leading his agency. "On issue after issue," Wyden told The New York Times, "there's a real question about whether the country and the Congress are going to get an unvarnished picture of our intelligence situation at a critical time."
Wyden's apprehensions were fed by a memorandum distributed to CIA employees earlier this week. The memo stressed the agency's commitment to objective analysis, but then added, "I also intend to clarify beyond doubt the rules of the road. We support the administration and its policies in our work.
"As agency employees, we do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies."
Supporting the administration and supporting the country are not necessarily the same thing. Delivering what Wyden calls an "unvarnished picture" is not the same thing as opposing an administration's policies.
Indeed, the CIA can often best serve the country by telling the president things he'd rather not hear.
The CIA, however, under former director George Tenet, was on the losing side of a war for the president's mind during the first Bush administration. The agency, along with the Department of State, furnished information to the White House counseling caution in claims about Iraq's military capabilities and intentions.
Those warnings were shoved aside by Vice President Dick Cheney's office and the Department of Defense, which made an unequivocal case for invading Iraq. The Pentagon went so far as to set up a parallel intelligence agency of its own to build a case for war, bypassing the CIA.
Goss' memo suggests he's determined to avoid that mistake. CIA officers perceived as having worked to undercut the president, including the agency's deputy director of operations and his chief assistant, have resigned. Michael Scheuer, a senior analyst who anonymously wrote a book called "Imperial Hubris" describing the Bush administration as having underestimated the danger posed by Osama bin Laden, has been forced out.
Bush's supporters inside and outside the agency characterize this as a routine postelection cleansing of the disloyal. Elsewhere, it's interpreted as a purge of dissenters.
Wyden and others are worried that Goss doesn't understand the difference. A willingness to dissent from prevailing views is vital in a field where information is often inconclusive. The president needs to know when the facts and his policies are pointing in different directions, and when that occurs the CIA must not fear saying so.
Otherwise, the CIA ceases to become a window on the world, instead becoming a mirror that reflects the administration's own image of the world as it is imagined to be. The CIA becomes like Polonius, incapable of contradicting Hamlet:
Hamlet: "Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?"
Polonius: "By th' mass and 'tis, like a camel indeed."
Hamlet: "Methinks it is like a weasel."
Polonius: "It is backed like a weasel."
Hamlet: "Or like a whale."
Polonius: "Very like a whale."
www.registerguard.com | © The Register-Guard, Eugene, Oregon
November 19, 2004
A window, not a mirror: President needs truth-tellers, not sycophants
A Register-Guard Editorial
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is worried by the direction that Porter Goss, the CIA's new director, is leading his agency. "On issue after issue," Wyden told The New York Times, "there's a real question about whether the country and the Congress are going to get an unvarnished picture of our intelligence situation at a critical time."
Wyden's apprehensions were fed by a memorandum distributed to CIA employees earlier this week. The memo stressed the agency's commitment to objective analysis, but then added, "I also intend to clarify beyond doubt the rules of the road. We support the administration and its policies in our work.
"As agency employees, we do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies."
Supporting the administration and supporting the country are not necessarily the same thing. Delivering what Wyden calls an "unvarnished picture" is not the same thing as opposing an administration's policies.
Indeed, the CIA can often best serve the country by telling the president things he'd rather not hear.
The CIA, however, under former director George Tenet, was on the losing side of a war for the president's mind during the first Bush administration. The agency, along with the Department of State, furnished information to the White House counseling caution in claims about Iraq's military capabilities and intentions.
Those warnings were shoved aside by Vice President Dick Cheney's office and the Department of Defense, which made an unequivocal case for invading Iraq. The Pentagon went so far as to set up a parallel intelligence agency of its own to build a case for war, bypassing the CIA.
Goss' memo suggests he's determined to avoid that mistake. CIA officers perceived as having worked to undercut the president, including the agency's deputy director of operations and his chief assistant, have resigned. Michael Scheuer, a senior analyst who anonymously wrote a book called "Imperial Hubris" describing the Bush administration as having underestimated the danger posed by Osama bin Laden, has been forced out.
Bush's supporters inside and outside the agency characterize this as a routine postelection cleansing of the disloyal. Elsewhere, it's interpreted as a purge of dissenters.
Wyden and others are worried that Goss doesn't understand the difference. A willingness to dissent from prevailing views is vital in a field where information is often inconclusive. The president needs to know when the facts and his policies are pointing in different directions, and when that occurs the CIA must not fear saying so.
Otherwise, the CIA ceases to become a window on the world, instead becoming a mirror that reflects the administration's own image of the world as it is imagined to be. The CIA becomes like Polonius, incapable of contradicting Hamlet:
Hamlet: "Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel?"
Polonius: "By th' mass and 'tis, like a camel indeed."
Hamlet: "Methinks it is like a weasel."
Polonius: "It is backed like a weasel."
Hamlet: "Or like a whale."
Polonius: "Very like a whale."
