oh, surely not.

[sisyphusshrugged]

CNN, which neglected to report on Mr. Goss' call to politicize intelligence, is reporting on the reporting on Mr. Goss' call to politicize intelligence

CIA and White House officials said Wednesday that a memo from intelligence chief Porter Goss did not order his staff to "back Bush," as a newspaper headline put it Wednesday.

In a memo e-mailed to CIA staff Monday, Goss set out what he called "the rules of the road."

"We support the administration, and its policies, in our work as agency employees," he said. "We do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies. We provide the intelligence as we see it -- and let the facts alone speak to the policy-maker."

The quote was provided by an official in possession of the memo.

A CIA spokesman said the memo was "a statement about the nonpartisan nature of what this agency does," rather than the opposite.

Luckily, CNN found an off-the-record source who was able to put the issue in perspective

The New York Times ran a headline Wednesday saying, "Chief of CIA Tells His Staff to Back Bush."

"It is false," said one official, "quite baffling." The official called The New York Times headline "dopey."

Ho-hum.

Comments

[dabroots.livejournal.com]

I don't see how that memo can be construed as anything but asking CIA employees--instructing them, really--to be supportive of the policies of the Bush administration, which are, by their nature, political.

[dabroots.livejournal.com]

It also started me thinking about CNN and its history. Looked it up. Ted Turner sold CNN nine friggin' years ago. It had already started going downhill, depending so much on squeezing every drop of blood out of sensational cases like O.J. Simpson's, but it's been getting worse, year by year.

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

The wonders of corporate social responsibility.

[(Anonymous)]

This is the scariest thing Bush has ever done, and that's saying something.

The CIA is supposed to find out facts. By telling the CIA not to report inconvenient facts, Bush is creating his own warped, Orwellian reality, where there'll be no one to tell us that we have not, in fact, always been at war with Eastasia.

And it's a strange thing when a liberal-leaning person like me is siding with the CIA against an elected government.

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

No shit. I agree.

And it makes me wonder how much all of this has to do with a certain former head of the CIA who our current President has issues with.