Spy vs Spy

One of the critical issues of post 9/11 America has been bureaucratic failure, especially in intelligence, first with respect to the 9/11 attack itself and with respect to the Iraq War.  These failures are now well documented, but a subtext, a theme running through out the reviews and investigation are the sometime subtle, sometimes obvious attempts to shift blame.  It is absolutely true that the primary function of any bureaucrat is to cover his or her own ass.  This is the most innocuous form of bureaucracy: merely self-interested.  One level up on the bureaucratic evolutionary scale is the agenda-driven bureaucrat.  In case anyone fell asleep during the run up to the invasion of Iraq, Joe Wilson and wife would be very public, though perhaps not the most extreme examples of this type.

There are Republicans and Democrats in the US government.  Employees of the federal government are not supposed to have any overt ties to political parties.  As individuals, they can give to campaigns but they can't publicly endorse anyone.  They are supposed to be functionally apolitical.  This is desirable for a lot of reasons, and one gets the impression that most of the governed believe that this is the case.  That leads the public to believe that when a functionary from the CIA or the State Department testifies before Congress or the 9/11 Commission that they are neutral, dispassionate, and therefore honest.  Readers, please discard this extremely naive notion.

At the top, all bureaucracies are concerned with politics, but with respect to our foreign policy, two cabinet-level agencies/departments stand out as having historically been filled with left-leaning, highly agendized bureaucrats.  These would be the State Department and the CIA.  If one doesn't wish to plow through the mountain of evidence from the checkered history of the State Department (Witness by Whittaker Chambers is a good starting point, followed by the first several chapters of Treason by Ann Coulter), you may delve into the processes by which the State Department  puts into effect a "go slow" approach so that when it is vital that we move quickly, in say, Iraq's reconstruction, positions don't get filled, people don't get hired, so projects don't get put forward, so money that is budgeted doesn't get spent, so that legislators and the media can say all kinds of things about how poorly things are going in Iraq and we haven't even spent the money we've earmarked.  This in turn bolsters the scurrilous accusation that we are just in it for the oil and we don't really have an interest in the stability and prosperity of Iraq per se.

To be continued...