Fox News tries to drive wedge between CIA and Obama

Based on the thinnest of evidence, Fox News' website, the Fox Nation, is using the foiled terrorist attack on Christmas Day to promote the idea that the CIA is “turning on Pres. Obama.” Fox Nation links to an article from the conservative British tabloid, The Daily Mail, which quotes an unnamed CIA official criticizing Obama for supposedly “pointing the finger and blaming the intelligence services” for the attempted attack by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

From the Fox Nation:

In addition to apparently cheerleading for dissension between the president and the CIA in the aftermath of an attempted terrorist attack, neither the Fox Nation post nor the Daily Mail article notes that in the December 29 statement referenced by the Daily Mail article, Obama praised intelligence officials and specifically pledged to “support the men and women in intelligence, law enforcement and homeland security to make sure they've got the tools and resources they need to keep America safe.”

On December 29, Obama stated:

The professionalism of the men and women in our intelligence, counterterrorism and law enforcement and homeland security communities is extraordinary. They are some of the most hardworking, most dedicated Americans that I've ever met. In pursuit of our security here at home they risk their lives, day in and day out, in this country and around the world.

Few Americans see their work, but all Americans are safer because of their successes. They have targeted and taken out violent extremists, they have disrupted plots and saved countless American lives; they are making real and daily progress in our mission to disrupt, dismantle and defeat al Qaeda and other extremist networks around the world. And for this every American owes them a profound and lasting debt of gratitude.

Obama also did not lay the blame for the Christmas Day attack solely at the feet of the CIA or other intelligence agencies. Rather than assign blame to the intelligence community, Obama said that it was apparent there were systemic failures and announced “a review of our terrorist watch list system and a review of our air travel screening, so we can find out what went wrong, fix it and prevent future attacks.”

What a difference an administration makes. The intelligence community was not only repeatedly blamed for intelligence failures during the Bush administration, but administration officials were involved in the leaking of former CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity. For instance, a 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee report on the prewar assessment of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capability -- completed when Republicans led the Senate -- stated: “Most of the major key judgments in the Intelligence Community's October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Iraq's ContinuiHg Programs for Weapons of Muss Destruction, either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting. A series of failures, particularly in analytic trade craft, led to the mischaracterization of the intelligence.” The Senate report also blamed the intelligence community for "group think." Additionally, then-CIA director George Tenet took the blame for President Bush saying, “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa,” a statement the White House later conceded was incorrect.

Also, senior Bush administration officials, including possibly then-Vice President Dick Cheney, were involved in the leaking of Plame's identity to the press. Former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice relating to the Plame leak. Then-special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald said in his May 25, 2007, sentencing memorandum in the Libby case: “There was reason to believe that some of the relevant activity may have been coordinated, and where there was an indication from Mr. Libby himself that his disclosures to the press may have been personally sanctioned by the Vice President.”