Politicized Intelligence Analysis

    I can only hope that this report  by US News writers Linda Robinson and Kevin Whitelaw is mistaken:

Now a new CIA director appears to be at loggerheads with many of the agency's most experienced operatives, who feel they are being disregarded and mismanaged. On top of that is a widely held perception of a deep political rift between the career professionals at the agency and the White House. (One anecdote suggests how bad things have gotten. Two years ago, the CIA's Baghdad station chief wrote a darkly pessimistic assessment of the situation in Iraq, projecting the possible growth of the insurgency. When President Bush was briefed on the station chief's conclusions, in July 2004, a former senior intelligence official tells U.S. News, he asked, "What is he, some kind of defeatist?")

Sadly, my experience as a senior intelligence analyst, the stories about the Curve Ball and DITSUM 044-02 documents tell me that it is true.