[+/-] Bush making illegal purge of CIA

Guess what? The largest spy agency in the world has a new mission: telling Bush exactly what he wants to hear.

WASHINGTON -- The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources. "The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda." Link

Why is this move illegal? Because US Code TITLE 5, PART III, Subpart A, CHAPTER 23, Section 2301 states:

 (a) This section shall apply to--
   (1) an Executive agency; and
   (2) the Government Printing Office.
 (b) Federal personnel management should be implemented consistent with the following merit system principles:
   (1) Recruitment should be from qualified individuals from appropriate sources in an endeavor to achieve a work force from all segments of society, and selection and advancement should be determined solely on the basis of relative ability, knowledge, and skills, after fair and open competition which assures that all receive equal opportunity.
   (2) All employees and applicants for employment should receive fair and equitable treatment in all aspects of personnel management without regard to political affiliation, race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age, or handicapping condition, and with proper regard for their privacy and constitutional rights. [emphasis mine]

Purging the intelligence community of those disloyal to the president? Purging liberal Democrats? Scared yet? You should be. He is going to kick a bunch of competent people, who were actually paying attention and doing analysis, out of the CIA, and replace them with yes-men who are going to tell him exactly what he wants to hear.

Bush likes to operate in secret. Information is the enemy. Write your senator. Write your congressmen. Write all your newspapers. If Bush is intent on behaving this way, do not let him do it in the dark.

This administration is reminiscent of a Soviet style operation...

• You have the information ministry which puts a happy face on every story,
  
• You have a stranglehold on dissent,
  
• You have a series of alliances with marginal states dependent on the generosity of the superpower for survival,
  
• You have every illness of top leaders being treated as a "cold",
  
• You have a personality cult of the figurehead leader,
  
• You have an impenetrable cloak of secrecy surrounding the government's decision making,
  
• You have a gulag of clandestine prisons kept hidden from courts or the world press,
  
• NOW we have purges of the intelligence community.

Is this a democracy? Or a one-party dictatorship?