Confusion Reigns

There is an interesting interview over at Salon which deals with the inter-agency squabbles over Iraq between the Department of Defense and the Central intelligence Agency. The subject of the interview is Thomas Powers, author of "Intelligence Wars; American Secret History from Hitler to Al-Qaeda." The interviewer is Mark Follman, who has done good interviews in the past. This one isn't bad, but it's clear that Follman is trying to take the interview a certain direction.

Anyway the focus of the interview and the book (apparently), as mentioned above, is the conflict between the CIA and the DOD. Near the end of the interview is this exchange.

Is the war inside the U.S. intelligence system completely off the charts historically? Is there any precedent for this?

I can't think of any. It's not uncommon for the various secret branches of the U.S. government to be at odds with each other. The CIA quarreled with the Defense Department for years over Soviet missiles, but I don't remember anything like this. The CIA was present when that team of Iraqi police went in and ransacked Chalabi's compound. I mean, that's amazing. The only thing that would've made it more amazing was if it had happened in Washington.

In a way it reminds me of the "Night of the long knives" in 1934, the night when Hitler got rid of the Brown Shirts, the street fighting organization that had helped the Nazi Party come to power. It was a highly organized institution bitterly hated by the army. It was run by a bunch of people who were politically ambitious and were direct rivals of the group that came into power with Hitler. Literally in one night the offices and headquarters of this group were raided and many of them were killed in their beds. Immediately all kinds of propaganda came out about their low behavior and betrayal. It was an internal government bloodletting where one faction just simply swept the other off the scene.

What the CIA did to Chalabi isn't exactly the same, but it makes me worry even more about the level of covert fighting inside our own government.

It is a bit troubling, particularly after the Bush administration and their supporters have assured us repeatedly that "now the adults are in charge."