http://www.antiwar.com/mcgovern/?articleid=13820

November 27, 2008

Seeking Integrity at the CIA
by Ray McGovern

Editor's Note: An underlying factor in the national security crises confronting the United States has been the corruption of the US. intelligence process, with analyses tailored to fit the desires of the policymakers and with laws bent to permit torture and other abuses.

In this guest essay, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern reflects on what went wrong and what now needs to go right:

The Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) must be a person whose previous professional performance has been distinguished by unimpeachable integrity and independence. The director must have the courage of his or her own convictions.

Without integrity and courage, all virtue is specious, and no amount of structural or organizational reform will make any difference.

More proof that Obama is just the other side of the same neocon coin:

"The Democratic White House hopeful has scheduled the inaugural meeting Wednesday of what he's calling his Senior Working Group on National Security. It includes former members of Congress and high-ranking Clinton administration officials.

Among them are three who advised Hillary Rodham Clinton and had served in her husband's Cabinet _ former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Warren Christopher and former Defense Secretary William Perry.

Obama also was meeting Wednesday with nearly 40 retired admirals and generals to discuss the state of the military and the challenges in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere....

Former Pentagon leaders are among Obama's possible vice presidential picks, those who have been consulted on the search have said. The first-term Illinois senator may look for a military or national security expert to help counter Republican candidate John McCain, a Vietnam War veteran and former prisoner of war.