[Newspoetry] NewsPoetry Writes Itself... Why do I crayon the walls...

[emerick at chorus.net]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36761-2004Sep20.html?referrer=email

Goss Vows to Resist Pressure
Nominee Says He'd Protect Integrity of CIA's Intelligence

*** Aside:  what Integrity is the headliner investing here as a magical attribute of the CIA service(?) bureau?  ***

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 21, 2004; Page A19

The White House nominee for CIA director said yesterday that CIA analysts deserve a hotline to his office to ensure that there is no undue political pressure on their work, a charge that was made by some analysts and administration critics about the prewar assessment of  
Iraq.
***End Clip***

What is "due political pressure"?
 
***Begin Clip*** 
"All I can suggest is that you put on the door the sign that says, 'If you think you're being pressured, or somebody's interfering with your product unduly, you are invited to call your friendly director,' "  Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) told the Senate intelligence committee.
***End Clip***

And, who will be monitoring the calls to the Director's office, oh mighty Goss?  You are not Ombudsman, but every high manager thinks he or she is perfectly competent to be a fair judge -- and thus wrongly denies the true need for true Ombudsmen.  "My door is always open, my phone is always unrung and ready to ring."  It's a load of bull crap, for a high level manager to ever dump these simplicisms out on us.
 
***Begin Clip*** 
"If I'm confirmed, I do not want to be the person standing in front of the President of the United States or anybody even close to that rank with information that I do not have full confidence in," Goss said. "And I am not going to have full confidence in information that has been contaminated by policymaking."
***End Clip***

Goss here portrays the myth that intelligence is mostly something that concerns itself solely with such hard facts that no one could misunderstand their meaning.  The meaning of full confidence is simply wasted rhetoric, already contaminated by a policymaking process.

***Begin Clip***
The pledges to protect the integrity of U.S. intelligence work came during Goss's second and final confirmation hearing yesterday. After the war began, some analysts said they felt pressured as they assessed Iraq's weapons programs before the invasion.  Congressional and CIA 
investigations into the matter found no evidence that analysts had colored judgments because of political pressure. 
***End Clip***

But, did the analysts feel pressure -- or not?  If they did, how can they be sure they did not color their judgments?  Or, better posed, how can we be sure that the investigators did not have a colored judgment as to what a colored judgment was?  Isn't it better to report the hard facts: analysts were pressured by management to arrive at conclusions at variance with the truth.  Analysts resolved their mental conflict by introducing copious caveats to the conclusions they did not believe.  (And, the caveats did not survive into higher level abstraction reports, that collated lower-level analyst opinions.)

But, Goss already opened this one to self-contradiction, when he quotes the intelligence investigation of the question of pressure on the analysts.  In effect, Goss claims, "Regardless of (political" pressure, analysts did not color their judgments."  So, then, why worry about a hot-line or an open door?  It would appear unnecessary -- a wholly frivolous thing.
 
***Begin Clip***
Goss also said he would put more analysts in the field so clandestine service operatives "can understand better what it is the analyst absolutely needs." He said analysts in different agencies still are not talking enough to one another on a range of subjects, from racketeering to political intelligence.
***End Clip***
 
***Begin Clip***
And he said the U.S. intelligence community still has not fully addressed the problem of "groupthink" -- failure by analysts working on the prewar assessment of Iraq to question the conventional wisdom that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
***End Clip***

Two glaring errors appear here.  First of, Goss lyingly misleads people to think that it was an "analyst" problem -- when we all know it was an intelligence management problem.  The analysts properly stated how weak the cases were, for any assumptions about Iraq's military readiness and research.  But, by the time the information rose, hydraulically, in the agency, the caveats had been purged --- ifs, ands, and buts all were kicked out, along with the cautionary phrases they would have introduced.  The analysts never failed -- but intelligence managers did.  (But, it is always popular among managers to suggest the employees screwed up, that they somehow failed to be effective, productive, profitable -- yes, yes, "Exonerate management, all of the time" is an Americanism, borrowed from the divine rights of kings, who could never do wrong, borrowed from the divine rights of the priests, who sit, ex-catheter, when infallibly speaking.)

And, then, "groupthink" is not something you can avoid -- if you work in an office or setting,where others also work.  Heck, you are recruited for the fact that you are a team player and get along well with others!  If we truly wanted deviant and defiant analysts, we'd have to imagine a far, far different world than is ever going to happen.

***Begin Clip***
"This process is not going as well as I would like," he said. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the committee, said Goss's nomination will be voted on by the panel at a closed-door hearing today. It then will go to the full Senate, which could vote as early as today or Wednesday, said congressional sources, who expect both the panel and the full Senate to approve the nomination.
***End Clip***

I'm totally in the dark as to what Sen. Roberts thinks would be a good "process ... going".  Does he think that any examination of a dubious nominee is a process "going bad"?

***Begin Clip*** 
Roberts also said that he believes Goss would be the White House's choice for the elevated position of national intelligence director, a proposed new post under review by Congress. The director would oversee, manage and coordinate all 15 U.S. intelligence agencies.
***End Clip***

Pardon me for asking why this agency was called the Central Intelligence Agency, originally, when it was first set-up after the end of WWII?  The rationale, back then, was that intelligence needed to be centralized, coordinated, and directed non-partisanly, by disinterested professionals.  Well, after a half-century of discovering that intelligence is never done in such a fashion as any of that, surely someone on the Hill would just say, "Stop it, you guys -- you'd be making me LOL -- even ROTFLOL -- if this were't such deadly serious stuff."

If it weren't such an oxymoronic idea, I'd propose a "Truth in Government" piece of legislation.
 
***Begin Clip***
During the 2 1/2-hour hearing, Goss also promised to correct any senior White House official who mischaracterizes intelligence in public. He said his personal intervention would likely be done in private.

Asked to name an instance in which an administration official mischaracterized intelligence in public statements, Goss replied: "I don't believe any public official in a position of responsibility has deliberately mischaracterized or misled anybody in the United States or 
anyplace else."
***End Clip***

I'd say something about this, but Goss doesn't want you to believe that this very statement is deliberately misleading.  But, at least the questioning of a few Senators showed Goss to be lying, even if they didn't just come flat out and say it.

And, what would Goss says: "Oh, Dick, you have been such a naughty boy."  Would a private "rebuke" cure the injury to the public knowledge-database?  Shouldn't we insist that the CIA director publicly humiliate the offending official?

***Begin Clip***
In response to later questioning, Goss said Vice President Cheney statement on Dec. 9, 2001, that  Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta had gone to Prague to meet with an Iraqi intelligence officer was not "as well confirmed perhaps as the vice president thought." The CIA never reported it had credible evidence that the meeting  occurred, although Cheney used it often in the months before the war as strong evidence to show a link between Iraq and the Sept. 11 attacks.

"Is that a kind of statement that's worthy of correction when it's made publicly?" asked Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.).
 
"I would suggest that it probably is something -- in that case, it's a hypothetical -- but if I were confronted with that kind of a hypothetical, where I felt that a policymaker was getting beyond what the intelligence said, I think I would advise the person involved... .  I do believe that would be a case that would put me into action if I were confirmed. Yes, sir."
***End Clip***

Hypothetical?  Cheney's statements are quite inconsistent with the truth.  But, Goss wants only to tell us that it's hgypothetical what he would do, but that we could be assured that he would do something, leaving us to imagine that what he would do would correct the problem(s) in the supposedly "hypothetical" situation.

***Begin Clip***
Much of the hearing was taken up by Democratic senators  questioning Goss's ability to  switch from Republican politician to nonpartisan intelligence director. "How does one simply become a different person?" asked Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), vice chairman of the committee, holding two binders of Goss's public, partisan statements.
***End Clip***

A leopard has his spots, indelible.  If he lacked them, he would indeed be something else.  But, never look for miracles, said Occam, when a more logical explanation is more readily available, requiring less imagination.

***Begin Clip*** 
"If I didn't think I could do this, I wouldn't be sitting before you, because I feel just as strongly as you do about" keeping intelligence nonpartisan, Goss replied.
***End Clip***

Yes, but does he believe it should not be done -- or that it should be done? And, does pro-regimeness count in partisanship, or is it simply "acceptable" nationalism?  Is it too much to expect, that intelligence might possibly be pro-humanity, first, and pro-American, second, as an afterthought?

***Begin Clip*** 
Roberts said Democratic senators who challenged Goss's partisanship because of statements he made as a Republican politician "are either very naive, very disingenuous or have their head lodged where there is not light." Speaking of those with reputations as partisan hacks on Capitol Hill, Roberts added: "This man is not part of that posse."
***End Clip***

I'd like to see a full list of those Sen. Roberts thinks are nothing but partisan hacks.  In fact, I think it would be much easier to say that everyone on the Hill is a partisan hack, except for a very short list of exceptions.  It ought to make news, indeed, when one says of the most powerful officials in the nation, elected in strongly partisan settings, that they are not partisan hacks!  Why "Man bites dog" is a more common truth than the why of "Elected Offical is not a partisan hack!"

***Begin Clip*** 
Near the close of the hearing, Goss apologized for the partisan statements  made over his career.  "I'm guilty, too, as I have said, of slipping into some partisan comment in areas of national security.  And I'm sorry that I have," he said.
***End Clip***

Florida crocodiles all have tears in their starry eyes at the magniloquence of this G(r)oss gloss on an apology.  And, so I conclude this brief piece, mentioning a few of the most glaring contradictations -- pointing to contradictions that contract, in the groupthink of the news media, into the nothingness of insubstantialities.