Wounded Gazelle

Dana Priest was at the top of his game on page A-9 of the Washington Post. The placement of the article showed that the Post editors don’t give much of a rat’s butt about the CIA. Inside, way inside, with the ads for Hecht’s and Macy’s Department Stores.

But it is the Sunday paper, after all, the morning when the decision-makers only have to wear their suit jackets and ties for the morning talking-head shows. They can wear jeans because the camera is only going to catch them from the waist up. And the rest of the town settles in for bagels and the book review or maybe brunch.

Dana covers the intelligence community, augmenting the venerable Walter Pincus, who is getting on in years, though he still wears his trench-coat proudly. Dana spent twenty paragraphs getting to his marvelous observation that the Central Intelligence Agency is a ”wounded gazelle on the African Plain.”

I liked that. I rode in a train one time across the grasslands of Kenya, and could imagine, looking out from the safety of the old East African Railroad rolling stock, what it might be to have the large cats circling me, the rest of the herd gone on without me.

The cats would be waiting patiently to tear me to ribbons with the onset of night.

Dana talked to the usual suspects to get the story about the impact of the appointment of John Negroponte as the Director of National Intelligence. It has been clear for some time that the CIA was the big loser in the intelligence reform.

I was never quite sure why. It was the FBI, after all, that had ossified into its regional offices that could not communicate, and Congress that had mandated the great wall between domestic and foreign intelligence. Not that there wasn’t a reason for the edifice, ”mistakes had been made,” passive voice, against individual liberties. But that was all swept away when we realized we had been at war for years and ignored it.

I asked Jamie Gorelick about that in an open forum in Crystal City a few weeks ago. She was the official who drafted the memo instituting the wall when she was at the Justice Department, and later served as a Democratic appointee on the 9/11 Commission. I asked her it it had been the intent of the Commission’s report to destroy the Central Intelligence Agency.

She said it wasn’t, and did not elaborate.

I can connect the dots, though, since I have no personal interest in anything except making the law work. Wherever he is, and regardless of the heat, J. Edgar Hoover must be wearing a big grin. The Bureau dodged a bullet. They largely skated through the intelligence shuffle because they are not, strictly speaking, an intelligence organization. If they will be forced to contribute to the new structure, their heart and soul and culture is largely intact.

And I have some real trepidation about that. Cops are not good intelligence officers.

But I have friends who are more sanguine, and they say to take heart. There are good people at the Bureau, as there are still at CIA. There is good news coming. The system has scooped up some bad guys, and their revelations have permitted a plot to be foiled.

I have no reason or need to know the details and did not inquire. They will be public soon enough.

My friend counseled me to pay less attention to the news, since it is focused through a lens. Look to the recent good, he recommended.

In addition to what we will presently hear on the domestic front, there is positive news from the war zone. I had to admit that it got a bit muddled in the reports of the bomb blasts, and the intimation that Shia death squads are beginning to take their revenge against their former Sunni oppressors.

The news only mentioned a few Sunnis who had been murdered, certainly no real down-payment on revenge for the wholesale slaughter being carried out against the Shia majority. I have been amazed at their forbearance, which should be a news story in itself.

And the real thread in this may be that two more aides to the Jordanian butcher abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s aides have been captured over the weekend. One of them was the logistics chief to the butcher, who knew how he traveled and where he slept.

Abu Qutaybah is being sweated now, and they also got one of Zarkawi’s drivers. This should give the mastermind the palpitations, knowing that his itinerary is now known to the agents of the people he has been killing.

Amid the torrent of news is the failure of the reporting to put the violence in perspective. There is less now than there was last year, and Zarkawi is now living the life that Saddam did, never sleeping in the same place twice, sometimes moving after a catnap. Tired people are lousy decision-makers.

Now that many of his hidey-holes have been revealed. I think he may be a risk of flight.

Two other high-profile bad guys were nabbed in Baqouba, a long taxi-ride into the Sunni Triangle northeast of Baghdad. So I have to agree with my friend. Embedded in the storm of chaos is some good news, and like the election, gives one cause for hope.

I think that even after hearing the most grotesque story of the weekend. Raiedah Mohammed Wageh Wazan was a news reader for Nineveh Television. She was a 30-something mother of four, and worked for the US-funded media outlet in the twilight city of ancient legend, now caught uneasy in the demographic transition between Sunni and Kurd majorities.

Her husband told her to quit the job and distance herself from Zarakawi’s lightening rod. She refused, just as thousands of voters refused to bow to the Jordanian’s threats to slay them and their children at the polls.

Her body was found dumped on a Mosul street yesterday. She had been kidnapped six days ago, grabbed by gunmen. It was a small note in that day’s bad news. She had multiple gunshot wounds to her head.

The other employees had also been threatened by Zarkawi’s thugs. They mortared the station last week. But as far as I know, Nineveh TV is still broadcasting. That could change, of course, and I would understand if people stopped going to work at a place being stalked by masked gunmen.

But if you turn this human tragedy around, look at the courage of this young wife and mother. There are those that claim the robe of martyrdom for their cause. But I think that garb should be accorded to Raiedah Mohammed. Her death may have meaning far beyond the blunt message intended by the murderers.

She was not intimidated.

The Iraqis are starting to do things for themselves, and they are closing in on the killers. I have the feeling that the gazelle looking at the circling cats circling might be Zarkawi himself.

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra

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