Great Patriots Except When They’re Not

by digby

Last night I happened to catch a couple of minutes of Mike Huckabee on Fox and he had this clever little ditty for his audience, which he called “Fancy Nancy”

Here’s a story about a lady named Nancy
A ruthless politician, but dressed very fancy
Very ambitious, she got herself elected Speaker
But as for keeping secrets, she proved quite a “leaker.” She flies on government planes coast to coast
And doesn’t mind that our economy is toast
She makes the Air Force squire her in their military jets
There’s room for her family, her staff, and even her pets. Until now, she annoyed us, but her gaffes were mostly funny;
Even though it was painful to watch her waste our tax money.
But now her wacky comments are no laughing matter;
She’s either unwilling to tell the truth, or she’s mad as a hatter! She sat in briefings and knew about enhanced interrogation;
But claims she wasn’t there, and can’t give an explanation.
She disparages the CIA and says they are a bunch of liars;
Even the press aren’t buying it and they’re stoking their fires. I think Speaker Pelosi has done too much speaking;
And instead of her trashing our intelligence officials, it’s her nose that needs tweaking. If forced to believe whether the CIA and her colleagues in Congress are lying;
Or it’s Speaker Pelosi whose credibility and career is dying.
I believe in the integrity of the men and women who sacrifice to keep us safe;
Not the woman who has been caught flat-footed, lying to our face. I say it here and I say it rather clear —
It’s time for Nancy Pelosi to resign and get out of here.

The head of the Republican party called for her resignation last week. And Newt Gingrich said this:

Newt Gingrich continued his attacks on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi Saturday, saying she “defamed everyone” in the intelligence community and he can’t “see how she can serve as speaker if it turns out that she has lied about national security both to the House and to the rest of the country.”

You would think that the right believes any suggestion that the intelligence community is anything but upright and truthful is basically talking treason. Certainly Newt thinks that defaming the CIA means that the speaker can no longer serve. But that’s something of a change for our God-fearing, flag waving wingnuts. After all, it wasn’t long ago that they themselves were calling the CIA the worst epithet in the English language — liberals.

I wrote this three years ago:

Going back to the days when the it failed to back up the Committee For A Present Danger predictions that the Soviets were planning to kill all of us in our beds any day now, the CIA has been seen by the Cheney cabal as a determinedly cowardly bunch of liberal elites who refused to see the true dangers lurking in the world — a problem they were determined to finally fix by naming loyal GOP hack Porter “Brownie” Goss to purge the institution of all non-believers. (Never mind the fact that while the CIA was often wrong — the Cheney cabal and the neecons were never, ever right.)

“The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House,” said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. “Goss was given instructions … to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president’s agenda.”

Oh my.

The next day, I added:

Today, the National Review writes this:

Too often the agency has performed that job miserably, the greatest example being its gargantuan miscalculations about the Soviet Union. In retrospect, this is perhaps unsurprising. The CIA has always had a leftist bent, well represented in its upper echelons even under directors of staunchly anti-Communist and pro-national-security orientation.

And in a terrific rhetorical sleight of hand they then write this:

Porter Goss, a former Republican congressman who once served as an official in the CIA’s clandestine service, was named by President Bush to head up the agency 19 months ago. His primary task was to end its bare-knuckles insurrection and policy interference, and return it to the business of intelligence collection and analysis. His tenure was marked by non-stop turmoil and bickering, as he moved to root out the insurgents and they fought back with a vengeance.

Goss’s sudden ouster is, at best, ill timed. He had merely scratched the problem’s surface. Further, the lack of a clear explanation for his departure is extremely harmful. It is certain to be spun as a coup by the insurgents. Such a perception will only embolden them, laying the groundwork for more leaks—and more damage to national security.

The CIA “insurgents” were liberals, not terrorists (although the conservatives would probably have said there was no difference between the two.)

When Goss was forced out the conservative establishment was apoplectic. Here’s the Weekly Standard:

We hope the president will select a new CIA director who is willing–eager, even–to challenge CIA careerists, and who will continue the reforms of that dysfunctional bureaucracy that started under Goss. We hope the new director will be an independent thinker, someone who is not cowed by criticism from a vocal (and highly partisan) crew of recently retired intelligence officials, or worried by complaints from the New York Times editorial board, or influenced by sniffing from State Department bureaucrats.

In short, this person should retain a measure of independence from the man he’ll report to, John Negroponte. In his brief tenure as director of national intelligence, Negroponte has shown himself awfully accommodating of the intelligence establishment. For example, when that establishment fought efforts by this magazine and others to release documents captured in postwar Iraq, Negroponte fought alongside it. When calls for openness came from the chairmen of congressional intelligence committees, he sided with the bureaucracy. Only when President Bush made clear his desire to see those documents released to the world did Negroponte acquiesce.

[…]

The CIA is broken. It has been for years. There is too much anti-Bush leaking and not enough creative thinking. There are too many bureaucrats and not enough risk-takers. Goss tried to reform the agency and to enlist it in the good fight on behalf of the nation’s foreign policy. Will his successor?

I know, the irony abounds.

Let’s not allow the Republicans to stage a “betrayus” hissy fit over criticism of the CIA. Mr Google knows all and Republicans have been slandering the CIA as long as I can remember for allegedly being a bunch of liberal commies who don’t care about the looming threats that conservatives see under every dust bunny. They certainly will defend the CIAs violent and illegal covert actions to the end, as they are with torture, but when it comes to the agency’s primary responsibilities, intelligence gathering, the right has rarely had a good word to say about them.

Saying that Pelosi has to resign because she “defamed” the agency is about as absurd an argument as they’ve ever made. If that were the standard, there would hardly be a Republican left in Washington.

Update: This is a fairly typical argument circa 2006 around the Plame investigation:

One complaint often heard privately within law enforcement circles is that the Central Intelligence Agency over the years has morphed into a Liberal think tank rather than maintaining its role as a strategic and tactical intelligence agency. An even bigger concern is that the agency has become overly politicized and prone to leaking information to the mainstream news media in order to have an impact upon the political climate within the Beltway.

For instance, it was the CIA hierarchy who demanded a special prosecutor investigate the so-called Valerie Plame-CIA leak case. It’s widely accepted that the law regarding divulging a covert operative’s identity did not apply in the Plame case. Even the writers of the statute are quoted as saying such. Yet here we are in the midst of a far-reaching investigation into the alleged leak.

Update II: Sam Stein hits this too.

Update III: Representative Pete Hoekstra, who is no one of Pelosi’s biggest critics, wrote this back in 2006:

“I have learned of some alleged intelligence community activities about which our committee has not been briefed,” Mr. Hoesktra wrote. “If these allegations are true, they may represent a breach of responsibility by the administration, a violation of the law, and, just as importantly, a direct affront to me and the members of this committee who have so ardently supported efforts to collect information on our enemies.”He added: “The U.S. Congress simply should not have to play Twenty Questions to get the information that it deserves under our Constitution.”

And this (pdf)

There has been much public and private speculation about the politicization of the Agency. I am convinced that this politicization was underway well before Porter Goss became the Director. In fact, I have long been convinced that a strong and well-positioned group within the Agency intentionally undermined the Administration and its policies. This argument is supported by the Ambassador Wilson/Valerie Plame events, as well as by the string of unauthorized disclosures from an organization that prides itself with being able to keep secrets.

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