They're practicing `CYA' at the CIA

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 23, 2002 | by J. Michael Waller, | Wade-Hahn Chan, | Daniel George

The CIA has been buying copies of Washington Times national-security reporter Bill Gertz's book, Breakdown: How America's Intelligence Failures Led to September 11, and is poring over it word for word. The new book, on Amazon.com's top five at this writing, rips into the intelligence community--including the CIA under current Director George Tenet--for an atmosphere that fostered supercautious, timid and lazy intelligence collection and analysis, among other problems. It was this atmosphere, says Gertz, that led to the failure to safeguard the country from terrorist attack.

Gertz offers hard-hitting proposals to fix what's broken. But CIA management isn't interested in studying Breakdown for ways to fix its systemic problems. "It's another classic case of CYA"--roughly, "cover your actions"--says an intelligence insider. "The CIA leadership is dissecting Gertz's book to figure out what tough questions they're going to get from Congress when they're called to Capitol Hill to testify. In so doing, they're making Gertz's point for him."

One course of action CIA management did take was to tighten procedures at headquarters. Hot on the trail of terrorists, top CIA management sent an urgent notice to its personnel two weeks before the first anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

In a blunt, no-compromise tone, the notice told all CIA employees of a new official policy, effective immediately if not sooner, concerning the entrances to the agency's sprawling Langley, Va., headquarters: There shall be no smoking within 50 feet of any door.

"This is Tenet's way of fixing problems within the agency," says a news alert! intelligence source. "His prescription for healing the intelligence community is Clintonian political correctness." In June, Tenet quietly presided over the CIA's second annual Gay and Lesbian Day, rallying homosexual cryptographers, analyst, clandestine operatives and others for a celebration of pride. "Now he's got a no-smoking Gestapo after us," according to a smoke-free intelligence professional.