Saturday, April 25, 2009

The Church of Obama

Let's get serious for a minute.

ABC News reports that CIA agents that the Obama administration doesn't give them the support they need to do their job:

"We ask these people to do extremely dangerous things, things they've been ordered to do by legal authorities, with the understanding that they will get top cover if something goes wrong," (Dr. Mark M. Lowenthal, former Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production) says. "They don't believe they have that cover anymore."


This is important. Very important.

Back in the 1970s, in the post-Watergate era, the Democrats overreacted to everything. They hated Richard Nixon -- to a degree not seen until their hate of George W. Bush. And they were going to wreak vengeance, no matter the cost.

It cost us a lot.

I remember it well. I recall when Idaho Senator Frank Church chaired a committee (the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) that effectively gutted the U.S. intelligence community.

One of the effects of the Church Committee was a drop in morale in the intelligence community.

Being a spy -- a field agent -- isn't all James Bond. It's not any James Bond. It's mostly being where you don't want to be, with people you don't want to be with, risking imprisonment or death if exposed.

But, knowing you have the support of your country helps.

After the Church Committee, many felt they didn't have that support.

Couple that with the restrictions placed on the intelligence agencies, and suddenly it's very hard to do the job.

What could go wrong?

Well, for one thing, the CIA could be caught flatfooted should the government of a friendly nation be suddenly overthrown by Islamic radicals. Such as happened in Iran in 1979.

Think about that one event. Had we seen it coming, could we have prevented it? Maybe. And imagine the world today had the Islamic Revolution not happened.

The intelligence community still hasn't recovered. Though morale is better, many of the restrictions still in place have made it hard for intelligence to be verified to the proper degree. It's never easy, but the restrictions make it harder.

Credit goes to Frank Church for the situation today.

And we're about to have part two of that whole situation.

The Obama administration is poised to hang CIA agents out to dry.

Look for a drop in morale in intelligence agencies.

And look for Congressional committees to "clean up" the intelligence community.

Then look for something to happen because of a failure of the intelligence community, because of the agents not being able to do their job.

Frank Church hurt this country greatly with his committee's work that hurt our spies. And he was a Senator.

Imagine what damage the current president will do.

2 comments:

  1. [...] last, but not least, Basil discusses The Church of [...]

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  2. It took the US years to recover from Sen. Frank Church. Seem to recal that he was running for VP at the time he tried to make a name for himself by selling out his country's security apparatus.

    When the next attack comes, Obama won't be able to blame it on Bush like he does everything else.

    ReplyDelete

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