Remember the many clever political and bureaucratic maneuvers that we used to attribute to George Bush and that came to nothing.

The other thing to keep in mind is that Rumsfeld began a process of moving ops from CIA to DIA years ago. I cannot believe this was irrelevant or coincidental in the choice of Gates to succeed him. I must confess that I was quite disappointed in the selection of Gates, but that his performance has been far from disappointing. I suspect he has also been very active in the aspects of the GWOT that we cannot see and that this success was part of The One’s decision to retain him in place.

Given that Gates is a former DCI and career employee of CIA and given that the primary problems at the CIA are its involvement in domestic political intrigues, it makes a lot of sense to put a politician in place to clean it up. I suspect that the CIA will not go away, but that the Directorate of Operations will be making substantial contributions to deficit reduction and will wither on the vine if not disappear. DIA will become much more involved in covert ops, either directly or through subcontractors.

I believe many Washington insiders recognize what is going down and are upset exactly because the CIA will lose a lot of its ability to play games in domestic politics. Sources will be drying up. Playing political footsie will not be the same career builder at DIA that it was at CIA. This is a major victory for OpSec.

Eliminating the CIA won’t help our image because the same people who believe the CIA is evil will simply project their fantasies onto its successor/s. The most vehement objections to the CIA come from those who adopt Stalin’s view of the America’s role in the world. The CIA becomes the evil tool of an evil capitalist, imperialist country. People that hold that view of America won’t be mollified by an intelligence reorganization.

This will not stop movies from being made about the CIA. They still make movies about the NAZIs. Indeed hatred of the CIA is so extreme that Valerie Plame claimed that exposing her as a CIA employee endangered her life.

It is customary to eliminate intelligence agencies when they become unpopular. All governments do this. The GPU, NKVD, and KGB no longer exist. Neither do the Gestapo or the Stasi. But their functions are still performed for the very people who eliminated their predecessors.

PR requires eliminating the CIA, divorcing ourselves from its evil, and handing out its functions to agencies nobody ever heard of.

Perhaps Obama will appoint James Baker to represent him in the coming negotiations with Hamas.

I wish I could care who ran the CIA, but I can’t, because I think the agency is in terminal bureaucratic decline. One of George bush’s worst mistakes was not firing the top 10 people at the CIA and the FBI on the morning of 9/12/2001. The Director of the CIA, has for better or worse, lost his pride of place in the Intelligence hierarchy. Now that the CIA is no longer useful to the Donkey Party as a stick with which to beat the President, perhaps they can get around to replacing it something that works, if only a little bit.

By destroying the CIA, the US will take the first step to rebuild its reputation in the World. By destroying the CIA headquarters the US will send a dramatic signal to the world that it no longer embraces the evil that the CIA represents. Naturally, those employees that are loyal to the US can find employment in the US, while the rest will continue on the payroll of their true employers.

He is better with longer pieces where he has time to cool off before he hits “send” to his editor. His articles in Parameters are almost all classics.

Mark’s analysis is much more thoughtful and realistic than Peters’.

Leon Panetta was an Army intelligence officer during the Vietnam War. I’m sure he can read a map as well as Peters can; they had the same training after all. ;)

Ralph Peters is actually a smart guy and not a buffoon but he plays one from time to time at the Post.