Republicans Blamed the CIA, Now They Hide Behind The CIA and Blame Democrats
To the consternation of Republicans and the media – including CBS News and The Politico among other who have gleefully ran what sounds like something directly written from an RNC PR release - Democrats claim CIA out to get them. Democrats, also continue drive the media and Conservatives crazy by refusing to play good little lap dog. Now Republicans like cry-me-a-river baby House minority leader Republican Rep. John Boehner are f reigning some outrage – how dare Democrats question the word of the CIA, Rep. Boehner: Now and Then
John Boehner Now
John Boehner: “I’ve dealt with our intelligence professionals for the last three-and-a-half years on an almost daily basis, and it’s hard for me to imagine that our intelligence area would ever mislead a member of Congress. [Boehner Press Availability via The Hill, 5/14/2009]
John Boehner Then:
December 9, 2007:
Wolf Blitzer: “Are you suggesting, as I think you are, that you don’t necessarily have confidence in this new NIE?” (NIE- the CIA’s national Intelligence Estimate)
Rep. John Boehner: “Either I don’t have confidence in what they told me several months ago or I don’t have confidence in what they’re telling me today.” [CNN, Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, 12/9/2007; emphasis added]
It was literally just a few months ago that Republicans were point blank accusing the CIA of being out to get them and Bush. The editors at the far right National Review, CIA Run Amok, May 8, 2006
The reasons for Porter Goss’s abrupt departure as CIA director are shrouded in mystery. But its effect is not. It gives the impression that there has been a coup by the CIA insiders who have waged a covert policy war against the Bush administration for five years. The White House must act quickly to correct the impression that the renegades have won.
[ ]..During the Bush presidency, however, the agency has not been content with subtly pushing its own agenda while underperforming its nominal mission. It has run amok. In fact, it worked assiduously—though unsuccessfully—to depose the administration in the 2004 election, and since then has continued brazenly undermining Bush’s foreign policy.
In a post by a far right Conservative blog called the Strata-Sphere, Rogue CIA Fires Back? May2, 2006 that engaged in some wild speculation of the motivations by the CIA in the investigation in the Rep Randy Cunningham’s (R) bribery scandal and echoing the thoughts of Drudge and a rabid right blogger called Macsmind, wrote,
Mac Ranger predicted the roque CIA agents trying to destroy this country through leaks would create some bizarre news. Sometimes we need to spell things out for the liberal puppets on the left, so I must point out again that the tools available to the CIA to gather information illegally and use it against people can be used by more than the President.
[ ]..The news that ex-CIA agents are talking to ABC News about an investigation into links between CIA contracts and Rep Randy Cunningham’s (R) bribery acts leads me to believe Cunningham may have been outed by some ex-CIA agents to send a message to the Reps and Bush.
John (AssRocket) at Powerline( once Time magazine’s blog of the year) wrote The CIA Comes Out of the Closet,September 7, 2004 Posted by John
Many people are unaware that the CIA is, and always has been, a liberal organization, its ranks dominated by Democrats.
[ ]..The CIA’s liberal orientation has been painfully evident over the last four years, as the agency has engaged in a virtual war with the Bush administration; its officials have been available 24/7 for anti-Bush leaks to the New York Times and the Washington Post.
Many of these Republican editorials are are fact free, never the less, the accusations that the CIA was a far left organization out to get Republicans and Bush in particular were a common theme as late as recently as last year.Stephen F. Hayes who was a political consultant to the Bush 43 administration in a column for neocon Bill Kristals Weeekly Standard, Paul Pillar Speaks, Again – The latest CIA attack on the Bush administration is nothing new (02/10/2006)(Linked to by multiple right-wing sites)
Think about that: A senior, unelected CIA official–Paul Pillar–was given agency approval to anonymously attack Bush administration policies less than two months before the November 2, 2004, presidential election. That Pillar was among the most strident of these frequent critics–usually in off-the-record speeches to gatherings of foreign policy experts and business leaders–was well known to his colleagues in the intelligence community and to Bush administration policymakers. His was not an isolated case; CIA officials routinely trashed Bush administration policy decisions, often with official approval, in the months leading up to the Iraq War and again before the election. Pillar, who had complained to a CIA spokesman that someone had violated the ground rules by providing his name to Novak, simply got caught.
Pretty much standard rhetoric from the Right when it became known that Bush and surrogates such as Hayes told lies repeatedly in defense of lies about Iraq intelligence, WMD and non-existent al-Queda connections. The anti-Bush CIA was out to get the neocons. Hayes was and as far as I know continues to defend the Bush administration’s occupation of Iraq in 2003 as a couldn’t-wait-considering-the-urgent threat cheerleaders. laughable now to most Americans in hindsight, but a commonly repeated bit of propaganda at the time.
Neocon and plagiarist of fascist writers, Michael Ledeen at The National Review,Sixteen Words, Again
The myth of a great sin lives on, April 10, 2006 ( again, linked to with great approval by multiple right-wing outlets)
The consensus at CIA was highly critical of these reports (most CIA officials were against the war and didn’t want to be blamed for it), but the White House, understandably very suspicious of the quality of CIA’s information and analysis, had pushed hard to get more information.
The Bush administration was using torture to produce false links between Iraq and al-Queda, thus Leeden and the Right accused anyone up to and including the CIA of being pro-terrorist. Leeden also managed, in the same column, to mangle and lie about every known fact concerning Joseph Wilson and the Niger yelllow-cake claims in one of the Right’s lamest attempts to smear Wilson and the CIA. He even gives more credit to some iffy French intelligence service reports then the CIA.
John McCain(R-AZ), who was against water boarding before he was for it is often given credit from moderates or condemnation from the freeper crowd for the charade known as the Detainee Treatment Act ( which Bush promptly arranged a photo-op then ignored via yet another signing statement) also thought the CIA was out to undermine the neocon agenda,
“McCain would be an absolute disaster,” says a second recently retired senior US intelligence operations officer. “He is prejudiced against the CIA. The day after the 2004 election when Bush won, McCain came on TV and gave an interview in which he said something to the effect of, ‘The CIA tried to sabotage this election. They’ve made their bed and now they have to lay in it.‘ I used to like McCain, but he is inconsistent.” Columnist Robert Novak quoted McCain in November 2004 as saying, “With CIA leaks intended to harm the re-election campaign of the president of the United States, it is not only dysfunctional but a rogue organization.”
McCain is influenced by a circle of hardline Republican legislators and congressional staff as well as disgruntled former Agency officials “who all had these long-standing grudges against people in the Agency,” the former senior intelligence officer said. “They think the CIA is a hotbed of liberals. Right-wing, nutty paranoia stuff. They all love the military and hate the CIA. Because the CIA tells them stuff they don’t want to hear.”
Many in the media want to portray Democrats as paranoid. If they keep at and cross their fingers and hope that most American’s memory is as long and credible as John Boehner’s that tactic may work. On the other hand if anyone in the media wants to use Lexus-Nexus or Google for fifteen minutes they’ll find that until recently as far as most Republicans were concerned the CIA were all radical leftists out to get them. This year’s fashions have changed. Now that the CIA has issued some memos gathered from from memories of some nameless faceless sources, it is Democrats who are allegedly paranoid. The CIA is in many ways like a large corporation that employs thousands of people whose personal politics vary as much as any work place. There are probably factions within department and the entire agency that differ in opinion about how things should be run. Now, one gets the impression that more then a political left-right agenda they’re probably just looking out for their own, much like large police departments are known to have tense relationships with their internal affairs departments. A Truth Commission in which the CIA, former Bush officials including Bush and Cheney, and even Speaker Pelosi and former Senator Bob Graham – all under oath. Then let the truth fall where it may, but that is exactly what the former Republican CIA haters do not want, thus the continuing battle of media sound bites and editorials rather then testimony,
“What struck me(former Senator Graham)…was the fact that in that briefing, there were also two staff members,” he said. “As you know, the general rule is that the executive is to brief the full committees of the House and Senate Intelligence committees about any ongoing or proposed action. The exception to that is what is called “covert action,” where the president…only briefs the Gang of Eight, which is the four congressional leaders and the four intelligence committee leaders. Those sessions are generally conducted at an executive site, primarily at the White House itself. And they are conducted with just the authorized personnel, not with any staff or any other member of the committee…. Which leads me to conclude that this was not considered by the CIA to be a Gang of Eight briefing. Otherwise they would not have had staff in the room. And that leads me to then believe that they didn’t brief us on any of the sensitive programs such as the waterboarding or other forms of excessive interrogation.”
The remarks made by Graham bolster the comments offered by Pelosi on Thursday. The Speaker told reporters that during her briefing session in the fall of 2002 she was not just kept in the dark about the issue of waterboarding, she was assured that it had not been used.
“Yes, I am saying that the CIA was misleading the Congress,” she said.
