Bush's CIA purge is probably the least of the surprises in store in his second term, writes Gamil Matar* In the last four years the Bush administration has succeeded in pushing through a raft of legislation affecting national defence, social and tax structures. In his second term Bush is now looking to entirely overhaul the CIA. The commission charged with investigating responsibility for security lapses prior to 11 September made numerous recommendations, including the restructuring of the American intelligence community, which includes more than 14 agencies of which the CIA is the most important. The subject of hundreds of books, articles and studies, this political and security citadel has also acquired worldwide mystique created by myriad fantastic tales and universally popular espionage films. A government agency of such notoriety, with a budget of some $4 billion and more than 20,000 agents on its payroll, is inevitably the object of both admiration and envy, drawing into its orbit volunteer agents and opportunists the world over and producing a larger number of enemies and adversaries. What is important in this context of change or reform -- call it what you like -- is the degree of animosity the organisation has aroused in the US itself. Senator John McCain has described it as an "evil" agency that has wrought untold damage to the status and prestige of the United States and to the peace and security of many foreign nations. The Republican senator from Arizona is one of dozens of leading politicians who have levelled scathing charges at the CIA. It is not difficult to understand what motivates such sentiments. The US constitution and law gives citizens the right, through their elected representatives, to monitor the conduct and activities of all government agencies and to conduct thorough investigations into any possible wrongdoing. The CIA, though, has always managed to evade such transparency and accountability and to operate as though it were a law unto itself. It dispatches spies to all corners of the earth, it assassinates foreign officials, it creates and funds armed militias and sends them into countries deemed hostile to the US. In short, it wages undeclared wars abroad without the knowledge of the legislative authorities, the media or the American people. It has also tested out its latest technology and techniques of assassination, espionage and kidnapping on American citizens themselves, without their knowledge. On one occasion, news of one such experiment, involving a new kind of poison, leaked out and President Carter was forced to order an investigation that resulted in the dismissal of the CIA director. Nor is there any love lost between American research centres and think-tanks and the CIA. This too is understandable. They rival one another in their ability to analyse and predict political, military and economic developments in foreign countries. Some of these centres were the first to point the finger of blame at the CIA for failures in Iraq, just as 30 years earlier they had held the Pentagon and the armed forces responsible for failures in Vietnam. The two are also in competition for the president's ear and for influence on foreign policy decision-making. Lies and deception are among the CIA's stock-in- trade. However, it is one thing when such wiles and tactics are brought to bear against a foreign party, since it is generally accepted that that is how all intelligence agencies operate abroad. But it is quite another when the CIA uses them in its dealings with other government agencies and decision-making centres in Washington. At the time of the bombing of the USS Cole off the coast of Yemen, the CIA was accused of tailoring information on the incident to suit President Clinton's desire to avoid having to take military action. Similarly, but with far graver and more far- reaching consequences, the CIA was accused of catering to Bush's plans to invade Iraq by supplying him with just the type of information regarding WMD he needed in order to justify the war. Is this not how all intelligence agencies function? Does this not epitomise the intelligence agency dilemma? Government executives are faced with the choice between an agency that hands over raw and unadulterated information, on which basis they can take the most appropriate decision, and an agency that selects and slants the information in order to serve a particular policy. Which brings us back to the purge and overhaul of the CIA. Why is it taking place at this particular time and with such determination? Analysts close to the White House have argued that over the course of its existence the CIA has scored six colossal own goals and that it is now time to clean up shop. It failed, firstly, to predict North Korea's invasion of South Korea and China's intervention in that war. It did not foresee the Chinese-Soviet face-off. It did not fathom the nature of the Cuban revolution until after Castro came to power. It failed to properly ascertain the presence of tactical nuclear weapons in Cuba and how prepared the Soviets were to use them. It failed to predict the possible scenarios of the Vietnam war and, finally, it did not foresee the collapse of the Soviet Union. These shortcomings, however, do not explain the timing of the overhaul. On this question opinions vary. Some have suggested that the CIA unearthed an Israeli mole in its upper echelons and in exposing the spy incurred the wrath of American Jews, Christian fundamentalists and the neo-conservative right. Others maintain that Bush is punishing the agency for disclosing secrets behind the ill-fated decision to invade Iraq and, more generally, that the president felt that it had not been as loyal to him as it should have been in a time of crisis. It has also been argued that the Defense Department has been trying to assert its control over all intelligence agencies in order to avoid a repeat of the phenomenon of conflicting and erroneous information and analyses that occurred on the issue of Iraqi WMD and its alleged connection with Al-Qaeda. Not to be ruled out, too, is the possibility that Bush so admires Putin's relationship with Russia's intelligence agency that he wants to repeat the experiment on his home turf. Ultimately, however, there remains the most logical explanation, which is that the ruling elite in the US has decided to upgrade all organisations of government in order to ready them for a protracted war against a new and unfamiliar enemy. Whatever happens, it is likely that the purging of the CIA is probably the least of the surprises the new Bush administration has in store for the US. The revolutionary change it has instigated will soon extend to the Department of State and, I strongly suspect, the academic community and the press and publishing business. * The writer is director of the Arab Centre for Development and Futuristic Research.
