The Politics of Cloak and Dagger

Re “Sycophant Spies,” Opinion, Nov. 21: David Wise needs to reread the Porter Goss memo to the CIA. It doesn’t say support the Bush administration. It says the function of the CIA is to support the administration, meaning any administration. Only Wise and those at the CIA who’ve become accustomed to making policy seem to have had trouble deciphering the memo.

Mary McLemore

Autaugaville, Ala.

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Wise’s piece accusing CIA Director Goss of trying to purge the organization of people who won’t slant their reports to favor administration policy is alarming, but only if that was the meaning of the Goss memo.

Generating only intelligence that supports predetermined conclusions defeats the whole purpose of intelligence.

On the other hand, the basis for much of Goss’ action seems to be that some CIA analysts, by leaking memos to the press before the election, were trying to influence voters against the president, who is, after all, their boss. This is politicizing intelligence as much as the other. In the corporate world, a professional who won’t offer opinions within the organization that contradict his manager is wrong, but so is an employee who tries to hurt his company by leaking information to a competitor.

Jim Mentzer

Los Angeles

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Saddam Hussein had his privately controlled Republican Guard. With the appointment of Goss, President Bush now has his own private Republican guard: the CIA. The independent gathering and analysis of facts will be replaced by data manipulation to justify political positions.

This is dangerous for the country and an affront to the thousands of career CIA employees who just want to do their jobs.

Mike Teobaldi

Westlake Village

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Wise accuses the Bush administration of wanting a sycophantic CIA. Yet there is no substance to this accusation save the twisted understanding of portions of a leaked memo.

The leaked memo itself is proof of CIA dysfunction and the need for reform. The memo has as its sole aim the discrediting of Goss and represents, indirectly, an attack on the Bush administration.

In both instances, we’re dealing with the “politicization” of a branch of intelligence.

Pasquale Vuoso

Santa Paula

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The White House and its supporters in Congress and the media are “shocked, shocked!” at alleged leaks from within the CIA during the recent presidential campaign. However, the whistle-blower is generally accorded some respect in our society, particularly if the facts disclosed result in some general benefit.

The alleged leaks seemed to lend credence to the belief that the administration had been at best incompetent and possibly dishonest in its assessment of the Iraqi threat before rushing the nation into war. If the information exposed to public scrutiny was factual, it seems only right that the public was permitted to include it in its judgment of the administration prior to an election.

Thus the CIA employees who helped bring such information to light can be considered whistle-blowing patriots.

Dilip Adarkar

Manhattan Beach

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What I and 56 million other Americans think of the CIA shakeup is irrelevant. I want to hear from the 60 million who voted for Bush because “he made them feel safer.” How, pray tell, does a highly politicized CIA, whose most experienced senior-level intelligence officers have been purged, make any of us feel safer? The other 60 million owe the rest of us an explanation -- or an apology.

Dennis M. Clausen

Escondido

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Since Republicans, Democrats, the American military and foreign nations do not, and will no longer, believe the claims of the CIA, it is time to consider the end of the CIA and an annual savings of $40 billion. The CIA real estate can then readily become a source of revenue starting with its conversion into a giant Wal-Mart. The new occupants will be lower-salaried employees with fewer benefits -- a new national goal.

Paul Lieberman

Torrance