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April 24, 2006
Political Purges and Civil Service
A CIA employee at fairly high levels (a career civil servant, though, not a political appointee) has been accused of leaking classified information to the press — serious classified information about things like government programs to track, capture, hold and get information from terrorists — information that could be used by the enemy to avoid being tracked, captured or held, and lessen the amount of information that the US gets from interrogating captured enemy fighters. In other words, she may have seriously undermined the security of the United States during war time. And it may have been for political reasons: she was a fairly hefty (for a non-rich individual) contributer to John Kerry's campaign and other Democratic causes.
Now the administration is apparently trying to figure out if there was more than one partisan leaker, a development over which Jon Henke is justifibly worried: we don't need political purges of civil servants (in the White House travel office or the CIA or anywhere else).
On the other hand, there is the possibility of a coordinated effort by Democrats in the CIA and State Department to embarrass the President by leaking information (often out of context or missing vital bits of exculpatory information that honest government officials who know it cannot provide because it would compromise security, which is how the whole Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson thing apparently came about). Or just, perhaps, spying directly for the enemy, which is worse. I'm hardly the first to note the apparent war on George Bush's policies by mid-level CIA and State Department staffers; it's been an ongoing discussion for years.
If that is the case, then there needs to be a purge, and it will inherently be political because the people being purged undertook their illegal and immoral actions for political reasons. So while I agree with Jon in general, this may be an exception — it is certainly too soon to tell.
Furthermore, I think that this is evidence that career civil service simply might not be valid in such an atmosphere of hyperpartisanship. The civil service system replaced patronage because it was seen as more professional and less corrupt (and much less disruptive) than changing over the civil servants every time the White House changed hands. In retrospect, that decision might have to be undone.
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