The Moderate Voice - Why Was The CIA's Chief Counterterrorism Bigwig Shown The Door?

The Moderate Voice - Why Was The CIA's Chief Counterterrorism Bigwig Shown The Door?

Why Was The CIA's Chief Counterterrorism Bigwig Shown The Door?
by Joe Gandelman
Was it because he wasn't enthusiastic enough about some of the White House's hard-ball tactics and didn't get with the program? The Daily Telegraph suggests that was the reason:

The CIA’s top counter-terrorism official was fired last week because he opposed detaining Al-Qaeda suspects in secret prisons abroad, sending them to other countries for interrogation and using forms of torture such as “water boarding”, intelligence sources have claimed.

Robert Grenier, head of the CIA counter-terrorism centre, was relieved of his post after a year in the job. One intelligence official said he was “not quite as aggressive as he might have been” in pursuing Al-Qaeda leaders and networks.

Vincent Cannistraro, a former head of counter-terrorism at the agency, said: “It is not that Grenier wasn’t aggressive enough, it is that he wasn’t ‘with the programme’. He expressed misgivings about the secret prisons in Europe and the rendition of terrorists.”

Grenier also opposed “excessive” interrogation, such as strapping suspects to boards and dunking them in water, according to Cannistraro.

Porter Goss, who was appointed head of the CIA in August 2004 with a mission to “clean house”, has been angered by a series of leaks from CIA insiders, including revelations about “black sites” in Europe where top Al-Qaeda detainees were said to have been held.

In last Friday’s New York Times, Goss wrote that leakers within the CIA were damaging the agency’s ability to fight terrorism and causing foreign intelligence organisations to lose confidence. “Too many of my counterparts from other countries have told me, ‘You Americans can’t keep a secret’.”

Goss is believed to have blamed Grenier for allowing leaks to occur on his watch.

Since the appointment of Goss, the CIA has lost almost all its high-level directors amid considerable turmoil.

There will be two perspectives on this development (and this report). One will be "good riddance to bad rubbish," that you can't effectively fight terrorism unless there is a total commitment on the part of everyone on the team. The other is that dissenting voices are being squelched and/or force out and that only those who agree and will follow orders without question need apply.

But, no matter what, this kind of turnover means that there will be fewer whistleblowers blasting the government since...there will be fewer...potential whistleblowers inside.