NYT: Outing Valerie Plame? Baaad. Outing Covert DoD folks in Afghanistan? Super! [jdub]

Big Journalism reports:

I have just received word that the New York Times is preparing to go public with a list of names of Americans covertly working in Afghanistan providing force protection for our troops, as well as the rest of our Coalition Forces.

The writer frames this as a kind of payback/pissing match scenario, with CIA and the NYT ganging up on DoD. Frankly, it's the first I've heard of it.

If anyone can put me some f'in knowledge, I'll try to update this post.

Hit the link for the full article.

Oh, and call the NYT and tell them not to do this. (Yeah, like they care.)

Update! Here, here for some background on CIA's efforts at undermining DoD operations.

NB: Please do note that at this time, AFAIK, the main post is single-sourced, and the supporting material is all by the same writer (although multiply-sourced, appears.)

Background on the eminence grise at CIA who might be causing the ruckus here.

Revenge of Update! Eminence Grise, Greased. Well, retired. Last night, apparently. Absolutely, positively nothing to see here.

Commenter The Q puts knowledge, per request, below the jump. Thank you, The Q.

Basically, after 9/11 showed how incompetent the CIA was, Cheney and Rumsfeld, who hated the CIA anyway, decided to place ultimate authority for a lot of covert operations and stuff under JSOC (Joint Special Operations Command). Despite this, the CIA maintained a lot of power, so in a lot of ways, JSOC and CIA are in competition with each other: for example, JSOC and the CIA have separate UAV bombing programs, and JSOC and CIA have separate interrogations programs.

Kooks like Ron Paul who try to paint the CIA as an all-powerful organization beholden to the evil BushHitler never took the time to realize that Bush ran most of his counterterror stuff directly through DoD via JSOC; in retaliation, the CIA went to war with Bush (2007 NIE is a perfect example of this).

It would make sense, then, that the CIA would try and thwart DoD's power in any way, and ganging up with those traitors at the Slimes is as good a way to do so as any.

posted by Open Blogger at 08:05 PM

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