The American Spectator

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Langley the Anti-24

By John Batchelor on 2.8.06 @ 12:55AM

Report from most trusted intelligence source re the sudden removal, exit, hatcheting of veteran CIA officer Robert Grenier, chief of Clandestine Services the last year.

This is evidence of profound turmoil at a wounded enterprise. Grenier is said to be an accomplished secret war fighter, working in Pakistan in the early part of the war after 9-11, later working in the Iraq Issues Group. There is mention of poor relationship with superiors; there is mention of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center now rudderless, demoted, dejected.

Langley now qualifies as the Anti-24.

DCI Porter Goss is either cleaning house of institutional memory or is recruiting from an unknown deep bench that is not obvious. Morale, never strong since 9-11, since Tennant's unexplained departure, since the WMD story got lost in an Agency drawer, has now matched the ratings for the put-on-hiatus Commander-in-Chief.

topics:
Iraq, Pakistan, Oil