So what *should* the President do about the CIA officer his fumble-fingered staff outed?

I got a real easy answer to this one.

The White House has launched an investigation into who is responsible for mistakenly outing the top U.S. spy in Afghanistan over the weekend.

Chief of Staff Denis McDonough has asked the White House counsel Neil Eggleston to look into what happened and report back to him with recommendations on “how the administration can improve processes and make sure something like this does not happen again,” according to White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden.

What he should do is, fire everybody who might have put the name on the list, and everybody who was supposed to look at the list before it went out.  That will improve the work performance of everybody else, immediately.  Now, I understand that usually Fire them all: God will know His own is probably not the best answer for a screw-up of even this magnitude; unfortunately, the level of incompetence that has become institutionalized at the White House has risen to the point where you might as well just cut off the limb and be done with it.  It’s gangrenous anyway.

Moe Lane

PS: Oh, never fear: as both I and Mary Katharine Ham know exceedingly well, the White House won’t follow my advice.  Instead, they’ll ‘investigate’ it for a couple of years and then get huffy when people bring up the subject.  Because that’s what happens when a President’s supporters are his supporters because they think that it’s a wizzo way not to be thought of as a bunch of miserable, stinking racists.

13 thoughts on “So what *should* the President do about the CIA officer his fumble-fingered staff outed?”

    1. Based on their past behavior, they’re just going to stall claiming there is an investigation and then claim it is old news.

  2. Heh. I told my wife over the weekend that Obama would appoint an Official Study Commission and that’s the last we’d ever hear of it.
     
    But somehow I don’t think the spook community will just turn the other cheek. I think — and hope — that there will be payback.
     
    I would not want to bet against the proposition that the CIA (and/or other agencies) has bugged various rooms in the White House, and that some interesting information about Our Leader will be used against Him.

    1. I’m remembering the CIA’s antics under Bush II, and finding that I have no sympathy for them.
      This [redacted] is the guy they wanted.
      May they have the joy of it.

      1. Yep. {copulate} ’em. Just another out of control bureaucracy, in need of putting down.
        .
        Mew

      2. What CIA antics, seriously aside from waterboarding a few terrorists that may have knowledge of an impending terrorist attack (terrorists that we caught on the battlefield whom were not wearing a uniform, meaning we could have technically had them executed as spies), I don’t recall the CIA doing anything aggregious under the Bush administration.
        –
        Seriously, Bush considered our enemy to be terrorists, Islamic Extremists that were trying to blow people up. He didn’t consider fellow Americans that disagreed with him on policy of being ‘the enemy.’

          1. Are we talking about the Patriot Act before Obama took office, or after he took office?
            –
            I don’t necessarily agree with everything in the Patriot Act when Bush was in office, but I understand why it was passed. It ended up being proved that it went too far and safeguards were put in place. However, the Obama Administration removed those safeguards after Obama took office.
            –
            That is why I’m more willing to forgive Bush over the overreach from the Patriot Act under his administration than what we’re seeing now under Obama’s administration.
            –
            I have no idea what “Echelon” is though.

          2. Echelon was a Clinton-era abuse. It was illegal for our intelligence agencies to monitor US citizens in the US. This was gotten around by supplying the intelligence agencies of allied countries (primarily Canada and the UK) with technology to monitor phones and electronic communications. Our intelligence agency would monitor their citizens and warn them of anything “interesting”, and they’d do the same for us.
            I don’t know if it officially survived after his term, but it likely became much less effective when Canada switched political power. Of course, it would have continued “off the books” even if cancelled. The major expenses were already out of the way, and no intelligence agency would ever willingly give up such a resource or the contacts that came with it. Had a major effort to shut it down been made, we’d have heard the squealing. (Also, I’m pretty sure it was NSA, not CIA running the thing.)
            .
            I mostly supported the PATRIOT Act. I went through it (I had a lot more free time back then) and saw that the hysteria about it was not justified by the text of the bill.
            It turns out I was wrong. There was evidently a significant portion of the bill that was not revealed to the public. The conspiracy theorists were right.

        2. In this case, numerous “leaks” to the press that actively interfered with the conduct of an on-going war. All seemingly for overt political purposes.

  3. I know several people who vocally called for Bush II to be impeached over the Plame fiasco.
    I could have some respect for that if they were consistent.
    But they aren’t.
    And they are confused as to why they should be.
    .
    Rubbing their noses in this, is not nearly as fun as I thought it would be. I have better luck giving lectures on basic morality to my puppy.

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