CIA vs White House

[blufive]

This one seems to have legs...

First, Billmon looks over the precipice into Tinfoil-hat territory:

But the more I watch the story unfold, the more I think something deeper and darker is at stake. It seems the top career elite at the CIA, plus Tenet, has pulled out all the stops to try to bust up the Rove machine. That suggests they're worried about something much bigger than just bureaucratic turf or the WMD blame game.

In fact, if this were a Third World country, I'd say we're witnessing the early stages of a coup d'etat -- or of a desperate effort to prevent one. But of course, those kind of things never happen in America.

(read the lot, and it's worth reading Brad DeLong's piece that inspired him, too)

Elsewhere, Josh Marshall has a rather juicy extract from one of today's press briefings...

It looks like parts of the US press have finally discovered something resembling backbone. If I recall correctly*, I even channel-hopped into CBS late last night to see Dan Rather pondering whether the Justice Dept, headed by John Ashcroft, would be making a suitably thorough investigation into misdeeds alleged to have been performed by Karl Rove (who used to work with/for Ashcroft...)

*It was past midnight, I was tired, a pre-emptive** mea culpa if I've conflated two different talking heads.

**Seems to be the fashion this year.