Either that, or he’s a principle-free hack who cares nothing about his country and everything about his party staying in power.
We know this because of this story, which opens with:
WASHINGTON — CIA Director Porter Goss said Thursday that the disclosure of President Bush’s eavesdropping-without-warrants program and other once-secret projects had undermined U.S. intelligence-gathering abilities. “The damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission,” Goss told the Senate Intelligence Committee. He said a federal grand jury should be empaneled to determine “who is leaking this information.”
Um, Porter? What makes you think AQ doesn’t suspect we’re listening in? Isn’t it pretty much a given than communications would be intercepted in wartime? Don’t they, as a matter of course, have to assume that we might be listening, especially given the very-prosecution-friendly character of the FISA courts illegally circumvented by this Administration? How, exactly, has disclosure of this program damaged our intelligence gathering capability? We see clearly how it’s damaging to your boss, to whom you are indebted politically, and to others involved in the clearly felonious affair, of course. Maybe that’s what you meant to say.
Alas, he continues:
Goss complained that leaks to the news media about the surveillance program and activities such as reported CIA secret prisons abroad had damaged his own agency’s work.
Emphasis ours. Sweet God in Heaven, this hack is whining about the fact that people now know the CIA maintains a gulag system.
But he’s still not done.
“I also believe that there has been an erosion of the culture of secrecy and we’re trying to reinstall that,” Goss said.
An erosion? This Administration is the most secrecy-addicted one in recent memory. They want everything locked up, and everybody in the dark, so that no one can tell what laws they’re breaking. They view oversight as a problem, and behave accordingly; that’s the whole point behind the domestic spying issue — there exists a court to oversee these sorts of surveillance operations, but Bush & Co. decided not to bother with it. The culture of secrecy is the problem, Porter. And you are part of that problem.
(Thanks to Triple-F for the tip!)