Getting Messy

The world is getting messy quick. Colin Powell resigned from Sec. of State today and considering who they have to replace Ashcroft, I expect Zell Miller to be the replacement. Goss, the new CIA chief is leading a "shakeup" (to use the Times term), Condeleeza Rice may be the new State (which means a new Nat Sec Director) and ODB died. A full week.

The CIA story is the most important in my eyes. This is simultaneous with a shakeup in the FBI and the new department of concentrated Intelligence Agencies (or whatever) being created. This means (a) our intelligence agencies are being gutted and will spend more time keeping their bureaucracies alive than keeping us alive, (b) in a battle between the FBI or CIA and the President, back the FBI/CIA.

I'll explain. As soon as I admitted that, yes, Goofy was elected in '04, I said to whatever Republican wandered into my path, that they could have done this the easy way - by having Bush go down gracefully - but now we gotta go the impeachment route.

Unless Clinton, who basically did nothing, Bush and his Band of Happy Elves have done so many prosecutable actions that only their tight control of information and curtain of radiating fear keeps them in power.

Bush is Nixon. Nixon was finally caught. Who did it? Yup, Woodward & Bernstein.

Actually, they didn't. They were just young and ambitious enough to be witting pawns of two very powerful agencies. The first was the man "Deep Throat" (whose identity we still don't know) but who was leaking all the damning info to Woodward.

The second, and most important agency was the FBI. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was the most powerful man in America - he had secret info and surveillance on hundreds of politicians and he knew all the skeletons. He died on May 2, 1972. His successor, L. Patrick Gray was cut from very different cloth (e.g. Gray appointed the first women as Special Agents, see the FBI website).

Gray and the new FBI leadership did not play Hoover's games and they went hard and heavy after the Watergate break-in. The key elements to the Woodstein stories were the grand-jury investigations opened by the FBI.

Put simply, the FBI put the President out of business. And I pray to God that they do it again.