Don't count out the neocons

The "resignation" of DCI George Tenet may signal that the tide has not turned against the neocons. Far from it. After all, neocon masterminds Richard Perle and David Frum called for this very turn of events. Their position was seconded by Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute (the neconservative equivalent of Mordor).

Pletka contributes a fascinating opinion piece to today's Los Angeles Times, in which she claims Chalabi fell victim to an alleged CIA-masterminded smear campaign. I'm old enough to recall when gales of laughter hit anyone who dared to suggest that American media outlets could be rigged to convey a smear campaign. Ten years ago, if you claimed that the CIA planted damaging information about innocent individuals in American newspapers, you would be relegated to an intellectual ghetto. Opponents would make derisive references to Oliver Stone and black helicopters. Nowadays, infighting among the elite has made public many a dirty little secret, and everyone admits that, yes, of course, Such Things Happen.

That's progress, I guess.

I think the neocons are half-right on Chalabi. Pletka won't admit that the man is something of a con artist (her blithe dismissal of his conviction in Jordan is hilarious), but she does tend to buttress suspicions that the U.S. used Chalabi as a back channel to Tehran: "That he has been close to the Iranians has been well known for years; the United States even paid for his offices in Tehran." Still, your blood may set a-bubbling when she asserts that Chalabi "is a foreigner and owes us no fealty." Oh really? I'm reminded of Peter O'Toole's great line in Lawrence of Arabia: "The servant is the one who takes the money."

The heart of the matter comes in this passage: "And since when is it the job of intelligence sources to vet the information they pass to the U.S.? Isn't that the CIA's brief?"

At first glance, one is tempted to mutter "A fair point, that." However, much comes down to the question of Chalabi's intention. Of course CIA should have double-checked all information coming from defectors with agendas; the agency has had much unhappy history with defectors. Even so, nothing justifies trading in false information. Angleton was a fool to believe Golitsyn, but that fact doesn't absolve Golitsyn of his moral culpability for his lies and fantasies. (If you don't recognize the names, get thee to Google and do some homework.)

Chalabi's fantasies were embraced wholeheartedly not by the CIA but by the Agency's neocon opponents, who set up their own pseudo-CIA at the Pentagon. The accusation "You should have vetted the information" is a sword that nicks the Agency while reducing Perle, Pletka, Feith and company into bloody bologna slices.

Now Tenet is gone. He will function as the scapegoat bearing all the neconservative's sins. Jane Harman -- a California Democrat, I am ashamed to say -- uses this moment to call for an intelligence czar to overlook CIA and all other United States intelligence agencies. This is precisely the outcome the neocons want. Such a czar will control the intel community's purse -- thereby increasing the pressures on Agency personnel to provide politicized information.

Some writers have presumed that the neoconservative moment has passed. Don't count them out yet.