Since I began blogging about the dysfunctional, bloated bureaucracy at the Central Intelligence Agency, I have been inundated with phone calls and emails encouraging me to keep it up.  Not surprisingly, many of them are from people fed up with the culture at Langley who have moved on to greener pastures.

What has been surprising, though, is the number of people within the Agency itself who have been quietly reaching out to me.  As I have taken pains to point out in the past and will do so here again, it is important for everyone to realize that there are exceptional men and women working at the Central Intelligence Agency.  Unfortunately, they are being very poorly led and very poorly managed.

On Wednesday, April 14, the CIA’s Deputy Director, Stephen Kappes announced his retirement.  The New York Times ran a softball piece on him the next day, but it was Kenneth R. Timmerman of the Washington Times on Sunday, April 18 who drove home many of the real problems surrounding Kappes.

The CIA quietly announced the “resignation” of its deputy director on Wednesday, accompanied by all the accolades normally reserved for a top government official forced to resign in disgrace.

There were many reasons why Stephen R. Kappes needed to resign at age 60, five years before the agency’s mandatory retirement age. Even the CIA’s Greek chorus at The Washington Post and the New York Times have acknowledged that this mandarin had no clothes.

In his piece, Timmerman cited Kappes’s “long record of failure as an operations chief,” how he “played politics with intelligence,” and how he had taken the CIA out of the spy business and transformed it into a “liaison service” by outsourcing the recruitment of agents and clandestine intelligence sources (once the Agency’s bread and butter) to other “friendly” intelligence services.  One can’t help but ask – what good is a spy agency that doesn’t even do its own spying? (more…)

In a follow-up to my story this morning and my ongoing series about the CIA’s vicious war on the Department of Defense that is partly being waged in the pages of the nation’s major newspapers, the Washington Post is reporting that the CIA’s Deputy Director, Stephen Kappes will “retire” and be replaced by career Agency man Michael Morell.

While I have been averse to mentioning Kappes by name, when I was informed last night that the CIA had leaked to the New York Times the names of Americans covertly providing Force Protection to our troops in Afghanistan and that the Times was going to run with those names, I couldn’t hold back any longer.

As the Agency has blindly followed what has become known as the “Kappes Doctrine” it has made mistake after mistake after mistake; all underscored by the horrible F.O.B. Chapman attack, one of its most deadly.  Something tells me that there won’t be anyone baking any cakes for Mr. Kappes’ sendoff.

There are lots and lots of problems at the Central Intelligence Agency and Kappes’ fingerprints are all over them.  He had become toxic not only for the CIA, but for the Obama Administration, which explains why, after my piece ran this morning, the bus was warmed up and Kappes was told to lie down in front of it.  Ask anyone in the intelligence world – there are no such things as coincidences.

The situation at Langley needs to change.  Getting rid of Kappes is a good start, but there’s a lot more people among the Agency’s dysfunctional leadership and its cover-your-ass management who need to make up their minds about whether they are going to be defined by getting promoted or by doing their jobs and keeping America safe.

Let’s hope that Kappes’ replacement, Michael Morell, learns from his predecessor’s mistakes.

I never thought I’d live to see the day when my daughter’s grade school newspaper had higher journalistic standards than the New York Times, but perhaps I just don’t dream big enough.

In all fairness, the articles at my daughter’s paper that appeal to the editorial board (longer vacations, less homework, a make-your-own-sundae-bar on every school bus) tend to get heavier consideration and better placement than others.  Unfortunately, the same can be said for articles that meet the heavily liberal bias at the New York Times.

But unlike the Times, my daughter’s school paper actually requires articles to be based on fact, be backed up with real sources, and it takes pains to guard against people who would like nothing more than to use it to grind a host of axes.

To that end, the latest axe-grinders granted access to the once venerable, now wrinkled Gray Lady’s anemic subscribership are Canadian Robert Young Pelton and anti-US military, ex-CNN News exec, Eason Jordan.  In a piece yesterday entitled Contractors Tied to Effort to Track and Kill Militants, Messsrs. Pelton and Jordan vent their rage at losing a Department of Defense contract and take outrageous outrage to new heights by claiming that not only did they lose the contract, but that the people they suspect took over are doing an even better job:

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