CIA FIFTH COLUMN EXPOSED

Seems like you have to travel halfway around the world to get the skinny on the fifth column right here at home;

Dissident CIA faction 'exposed' News Australia.com

A HIGH-ranking Republican congressman has exposed what he sees as a dissident faction within the CIA that he says "intentionally undermined" the policies of US President George W Bush.

Rumours about the existence of such a group have circulated in the US capital for a long time, but the comments by Representative Peter Hoekstra, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, marks the first time they were confirmed by an official with intimate knowledge of the intelligence community.

The CIA has refused to comment on the charge.

The document has been obtained by The New York Times and posted on its website in its entirety. Mr Hoekstra confirmed its authenticity in a television interview today, but did not elaborate on his concerns.

Why can't fire these guys, today now and convene a grand jury to indict? 

Comments

[skippy]

We should trust the President. He will tell us what we need to know.

He is our Commander in Chief.

[elvis]

NYT- Tell us who the traitors are in the CIA and you can avoid an indictment or at least being discredited.

[Richard Davis]

The Intelligence agencies know or strongly suspect who the leakers are, they just lack the will to prosecute them because many in senior positions are Bush-hating liberals with an agenda to bring him down.

[elvis]

I guess the irony is too subtle for those leakers who are supposed to have America's best interest at heart. Those careerists in senior positions don't want to jeopordize their Saudi lobbyist positions when they retire.

[Bilgeman]

Atlas;

"Why can't fire these guys, today now and convene a grand jury to indict?"

CIA employees serve at the pleasure of the Director of the CIA, and thus can basically be canned at no-notice.

Problem is that those who would place themselves in jeopardy of being fired make it their business to find out where all the bodies are buried.

Assuming that they have done anything prosecutable, a trial in open court would be the last thing the Agency would want.

Ramsey Clark, fr'instance, would come a-runnin' to their defense team so fast that his shadow would be left behind, kneeling in front of Saddam Hussein, in a Baghdad jail cell.

And that's if they, like Aldrich Ames, were dumb enough to sit around and wait for it, rather than defect with their briefcase full of secrets.

Regards;

Sad, sad truth is--hard to fire any federal worker. CIA careerists are, by nature and habit, better than average at working the bureaucracy.

A lot of heads need to roll to get CIA on track, and to hell with the consequences. It needs to be trulyu fixed or scrapped--no in betweens.

[Thomas Carney]

Unfortunately, the last poster is absolutely right. It is very difficult to fire a federal employee.

Bilgeman is very wrong here. Unless that employee has committed a crime or has divulged secrets, they cannot be canned at will.

Same problem in State Dept., there's a lot of mid- and high-grade employees left over from the Clinton Administration, some even from the Carter days, undermining our present administration.

Richard Davis: The real reason so few are prosecuted is because the agencies in question (CIA, DIA, NSA, NGEO, and FBI) don't want the embarassment of a scandal. This is what we get for electing gutless f_ckers in Washington.

[wxjames]

You don't need to fire anybody. Just publish a list of their names and addresses.

[lumberjack]

OK, I'll go first:
Valerie Plame.