Obama and the CIA

last updated 8 January 2015

“Not to be ornery,” said Michael Crowley in The New Republic, but it was a little inappropriate for Central Intelligence Agency officers to cheer President Obama as if they were at "a political pep rally" when he visited their headquarters on Tuesday. The Bushies thought the CIA was out to get them, but it’s just as dangerous if CIA analysts are “out to please Obama.”

Rampant adulation is hardly Obama's problem at Langley, said David Ignatius in The Washington Post. His decision to release four Bush-era interrogation memos, “in the words of one veteran officer, 'hit the agency like a car bomb in the driveway.’” Obama says CIA officers won’t be prosecuted for following lawful orders, but “the people on the firing line” think he has declared “open season” on our counterterrorism “shadow warriors.”