Pacific Views

Will the CIA take the blame and quietly go about with its tail between its legs?

Yes. For all their grumbling, they are CIA and GOP before they are patriots. Tenent and others may have already been "paid off" to hold their tongues.

A more interesting question is why the DC DEMs are going along with this CIA "intelligence failure" fiction?

Marie,

I think that Senator Rockafeller is trying to dig deeper, yet, he doesn't control the agenda:

Sen. John "Jay" Rockefeller IV (D-W. Va.) said yesterday he had secured a promise from Roberts to ask one executive agency, the Defense Department and, in particular, its Office of Special Plans, for information about the intelligence it collected or analyzed on Iraq.

The office has been accused by some congressional Democrats and administration critics of gathering unreliable intelligence on Iraq that bolstered the administration's case for war. Those allegations have not been substantiated, and the director of the office, William Luti, has denied them.

Of course, it isn't just Rummy that needs to be investigated: it is the whole cabal - and especially Cheney. One of the real problems with the government being all in the hands of one party is that we have to rely on the honor of some of the Republicans, or whistle blowers or a committed press. Right now the press and the Repubs are not stepping up to their obligations to this country. Any whistle blowers are definitely exposed until they get some attention. We are definitely sailing through some perilous waters.

Josh Marshall has more on this:

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2003_10_19.html#002115

excerpt:
An NIE (national intelligence estimate) is a systematic evaluation of all the Intelligence Community knows about a given subject. And it’s put together to help the government frame a policy to address a given problem or challenge.

But as the articles in the Washington Post today note (if rather obliquely), that’s not what happened here.

This NIE was done after the White House had already chosen its policy. And it wasn’t even the White House that called for it, but rather Senate Democrats who were miffed that the administration had never requested an NIE.

In fact, the White House specifically resisted requesting an NIE because it didn’t want the findings getting in the way of its policy.

So Roberts' claim that the White House was “ill-served” fails on chronology and simple logic. The NIE could not have failed the White House, because the White House didn’t use it. Simple as that.