One side of the missing interrogation tapes story that hasn't been discussed enough is the following question: To what extent is the culture of the "new CIA" to blame?
By the "new CIA," I mean the infusion of less experienced but politically orthodox employees that spiked when Porter Goss became Director. In 2005, Goss' appointment started a wave of resignations, including some very senior, very experienced people from the covert action side of the CIA. Goss and his entourage had been hostile to the traditional Agency for years; seeing them walking in the front door, many career CIA employees decided to exit through the back.
Goss may be gone, but his legacy remains. A decade or so ago, the people who worked at the CIA inherited generations of experience at spycraft. That legacy was often quite literal: some CIA operatives were the children of former operatives. The CIA's history was definitely marred by major errors, from the failure to predict the collapse of the USSR to the immoral testing of LSD on unwitting subjects. Still, the Agency learned some of the important lessons from its successes and failures; certainly, the decades of institutional experience were a vital commodity.
The Agency also learned the inevitability of legal discovery. From the Church Committee through the FBI probes in the 1990s, CIA employees have had ample reminders that their actions might fall under legal scrutiny.
However, that's probably not the expectation of the "Gosslings." Instead, many of them brought to the Agency the "pull no punches, be bound by no law" attitude that the Bush Administration encouraged throughout the executive branch. In other words, some of the people who might have been involved in the decision to destroy the interrogation tapes were guided not by decades of hard-won CIA experience, but the fantasies of the Fox scriptwriters behind the 24 TV series.
It's therefore pointless for Porter Goss to throw up his hands and claim that he had nothing to do with the destruction of the tapes, any more than Henry II could be held blameless for wishing aloud that something would be done about that meddlesome priest.
I just need to say, hey thanks. It's good to see your posts again. I appreciate your cogent and thoughtful analyses.
~B
Posted by: caramida | 12/27/2007 at 21:45