| Intelligence Failure The Virginia Gold Cup was last Saturday, the first day after Porter Goss's resignation from the CIA was made public. The course is out in the Hunt Country, in the lush green hills. Everyone who is anyone was there from our transient capital, all of us dressed in our spring best, hats and sundresses for the ladies, and sporty ensembles and ties for the men. The richest were up on Members Hill with the movie stars and Senators, all on display. Actor Tommy Lee Jones sponsored a Jack Russel terrier race, for fun, and a private security firm with international contracts dropped its own parachute team from a company aircraft. White hospitality tents ringed the course, sponsored by contractors and consulting firms. Most had the names prominently placed. Some did not. I was at one of the latter, where the people do not want you to know who they are. Spies live below the radar. The terms "prominent" and "intelligence official" are an oxymoron. You can be famous after you retire, not before. Ask Ambassador Wilson's wife, whose name I won't mention. Her position as a CIA operator was leaked by Scooter Libby, the Vice President's Chief of Staff. He is under indictment, now. Naming names is a bad thing in the business. Renegade CIA Agent Phil Agee made a career by publishing lists of CIA operatives, and a law was passed to make the practice illegal. That is what came back to haunt Mr. Libby. In a larger sense, the spies have always been a popular target to punish for other people's mistakes. The clandestine service has not been the same since the Halloween Massacre of 1979, when Jimmy Carter ordered 700 DO officers be cut from the payroll. We have had our ups and downs, depending on how successful the policymakers are. We have just been re-organized again over the 9/11 intelligence failure, though everyone knew something was going to happen. We just didn't predict the hour and minute. Talk at the rail was all about the brief, stiff press conference with Mr. Goss and the President the day before. It had come as no surprise to the people in the tent. The news had begun to circulate two weeks before, when the resumes of Mr. Goss's personal staff hit the street. The young Congressional staffers who came with Mr. Goss from the Hill were called "the Goslings." The Agency hated them as outsiders, and the Goslings, accustomed to being treated with deference, were bemused. The formal announcement from the White House was supposed to wait for the proper timing. The President was re-inventing his staff, re-arranging the Administration's deckchairs, and replacing the Director of the CIA at the same time might convey a sense of disorder. A woman in a position to know raised the brim of her sweeping hat and peered at me. "He told them if he was getting fired he would do it on his own terms, not theirs.” “He did just what they told him to do,” I said, sipping on a white wine. “This was really about the lack of support on the WMD issue, and the adversarial relationship between the Pentagon and the Agency. He was supposed to disestablish the CIA as the lead intelligence agency.” “That is the heart of it,” my friend said. “The scandal talk is just Washington gas and character assassination. When things go wrong, you can always fire some spies and claim it was an intelligence failure.” "It is no wonder they were unhappy at Langley. They wound up being the whipping boy for a lot of other mistakes. Maybe General Mike Hayden can make things better. He is a smart guy. He is bringing back Steve Kappes as his Deputy." "Steve is a legend in the Directorate for Operations. He got Mohammar Qaddafy to renounce nuclear weapons. He quit just after the Goslings arrived." "Maybe he can do that again in Iran. The Agency needs some good news." Some horses went by, hooves flying and color flashing from the silks on the jockeys. "Don't we all," I said. |