CIA sources on suspected Hezbollah spy: What’s the big deal?
posted at 3:29 pm on November 18, 2007 by Allahpundit
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I love the excuse in the Daily News article. Sinister double agent? Or just crafty go-getter?
James Bamford, who has written several respected books on the intelligence community, said it’s not surprising CIA vets wouldn’t care that Prouty lied. It’s the difference between the CIA and FBI cultures, he said. “One agency teaches people to lie and break the rules. The other teaches them to tell the truth and obey the rules,” Bamford said.
While FBI agents are indoctrinated to be morally pure because they often testify in criminal trials, “the CIA is the opposite,” he said. “The CIA was founded on subverting laws, going over walls and under fences.”
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First!
Yeah, he’s point is pretty obvious though, isn’t it? This is how the CIA portrays itself to be.
Vincenzo on November 18, 2007 at 3:31 PM
“What’s the big deal?” Something called national security. If the CIA doesn’t get this, it’s time to clean house and get people in there that do.
katieanne on November 18, 2007 at 4:02 PM
As mentioned on MM.com, it may be time to close Langley and use our smaller, more secure, more nimble agencies to get the job done.
Zorro on November 18, 2007 at 4:13 PM
National Security isn’t even an idea in our capital these days. “Money trumps national security” is the name of the game. We don’t need National Security as long as we’re paying the jizya, do we?
Buzzy on November 18, 2007 at 4:13 PM
CIA apologist? Of course without all the leaks and backstabbing traitorous espionage from the CIA the press would not have had anywhere as much fun these last 7 years.
Gotta protect their source.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for the press to finally come out and say what we are all thinking. The CIA is crap. The entire organization should be scrapped down to the janitor.
Replace every single soul (except maybe the ops guys).
Agrippa2k on November 18, 2007 at 4:17 PM
The CIA has been nothing but trouble since it started. They may not be responsible for every bad thing in the world, as some people like to say. But they helped create the state we’re in today by giving legitimacy to the Islamic fundamentalists. And it wasn’t just the CIA. It was also people in the State Department, who thought Islamic fundamentalism was a good counterforce against Communism.
mram on November 18, 2007 at 4:30 PM
It is only logic. You hire someobody that you know works for the other guys. If you can convert them to your side you have a mole in their system. come on! is in every spy book!
Ropera on November 18, 2007 at 6:39 PM
The CIA… asleep at the wheel.
Maxx on November 18, 2007 at 7:34 PM
I think the scarier thing here is that there are probably many more spies in the CIA and FBI right now.
SoulGlo on November 18, 2007 at 10:23 PM
Shoot, even after the CIA’s top Cuba analyst was exposed as a Castro mole and tossed in the slammer for espionage, the CIA continued to promote her benign assessment of Cuba’s bio/chem ambitions. Why sweat the small stuff if folks are telling you what you want to hear?
On the other hand, Ayan Hirsi Ali lied on her Dutch immigration docs, so it’s hard to claim such transgressions are exactly a mortal sin by definition.
JM Hanes on November 18, 2007 at 10:56 PM
This probably isn’t getting the coverage it deserves because Gordon Prouty, the husband of this (let’s use the words) double agent, first made his bones at State under that progressive icon, Madeleine Albright. It’s “unhelpful” to the “IABF” (It’s All Bush’s Fault) meme’.
And I don’t really believe that anyone at State ever saw Islamism as a “counterweight” to Communism. Based on the insular Ivy League/leftist culture there since the Alger Hiss/Whittaker Chambers days, it would probably be more accurate to say that the “Wise Heads” at State saw Islamism as yet another lever to use to force the West (specifically the United States) to accept “socialism” as a forerunner of a single world-wide “common ideal”- defined as a sort of faux-Communism run by those very same “Wise Heads”.
They probably still can’t believe how badly their “grand strategy” has backfired on them. They have weakened the West, to be sure- that was in fact part of their “grand vision”. Unfortunately, they have also strengthened and emboldened an atavistic, widespread and lethal enemy that, if it is victorious, will not only wreck the West, but its own culture as well, bringing the whole of civilization crashing down around their patrician ears.
cheers
eon
eon on November 19, 2007 at 7:35 AM
Good point about them not being anti-communist, but there also may be a subconscious (or conscious) effort to advance Islam since so many of the Ivy League “elites” at State and the CIA believe that the Jews run the world and its all their fault that we are in such a mess in the Middle East.
They think we’d have peace on earth if not for Israel, which of course ignores the Islamist mission to conquer the world either by killing the infidels or forcing us to live in Dhimmitude.
I don’t know that they recognize that their strategy has “backfired” either, because if they did they wouldn’t keep leaking classified documents to the New York Times and WaPo.
Buy Danish on November 19, 2007 at 8:03 AM
Well you see the problem is…That not only have they not recognized that their strategy has “backfired” they actually think it is working better than they could have ever hoped it would.
doriangrey on November 19, 2007 at 8:47 AM
It is interesting that the same crew that set up the guys from AIPAC are kissy kissy with the Prouty scandal. The elites at State Department and the CIA have always been fiercely proArab and they never change. They view George W. Bush as illegitimate and believe that the elites from State and CIA, who attended the same eastern prep schools should alone make US policy.
Larraby on November 19, 2007 at 10:00 AM
Yep, it’s effectively a bloodless coup.
Buy Danish on November 19, 2007 at 1:56 PM