Nicholas F. Benton's White House Report:

Few were more mortified by the outcome of the Nov. 2 presidential election than virtually an entire tier of the most seasoned, professional senior officials in the Central Intelligence Agency. For the best of these, the intelligence duties of their agency are above partisan politics, or even any particular policy initiative. Their role is to accurately divine the global terrain in which the U.S. operates as a nation. What the politicians and the policy-makers do with that information and analysis is another matter entirely.

But President Bush's appointment of Porter Goss as the new CIA director signaled the administration's intent to change all that. Goss is an ideologue with a political agenda, just what should not be compatible with the mission of the agency. He is widely viewed as lacking the professional acumen to manage such a position, and many senior analysts in the CIA kept their fingers crossed that this hardly-bearable situation would be temporary, and that with Bush's defeat would come a return to normalcy.

Less than two weeks after Bush's re-election, however, came word that a massive purge of the agency was underway. A 32-year veteran, John McLaughlin, retired last Friday and Stephen Kappes and Michael Sulick resigned Monday after clashing with a Goss lieutenant. Intelligence, for the Bush inner circle, is no longer a matter of objective analysis, it is a matter of loyalty and ideology. The worst kind of corruption of intent of one of the nation's most important national security institutions is now a matter of administration policy.

Goss' top aides came with him from the House Intelligence Committee where they were partisan henchmen. According to one retired senior CIA official, as reported in Monday's Newsday, Goss' ideological biases include, among other things, a strong inclination to eschew liaison work with foreign intelligence agencies. The official said, "The CIA's best intelligence really comes from liaison work. The CIA is simply not going to develop the assets (agents and case officers) that would meet the intelligence requirements" without such links.

Bush's focus on loyalty and ideology also applied to the departure of Colin Powell as Secretary of State and his replacement by Bush inner-circle confidant Condoleezza Rice. Once again, loyalty trumped competence as the prime consideration for a top-level post-election shake-up. Rice cannot be expected to provide any anything remotely resembling an independent assessment of wise foreign policy options, as Powell sought to do. She comes in as an ideologue, reborn in the post-Sept. 11 world as a devotee of messianic neocon thinking, convinced, among other things, that the U.S. must prevail, in a sweeping fashion, with its brand of leadership throughout the Arab world.

As lame as Powell's protestations of Bush policy might have been in the public eye, the best State Department professionals thrived under his leadership and morale was maintained. Powell worked quietly and painstakingly behind the scenes in areas where the Bush crowd's brazen ideological searchlights did not extend.

Now, however, the State Department will be under the control of one of "them," and it may not be long until the same purge mentality now ravaging the CIA will extend there. Rice's "the U.S. way or the highway" approach to the Arab world, especially as applied to Iraqi neighbors Syria and Iran, couldn't be worse for the U.S.'s ability to win out against Osama bin Laden in the long run, according to one CIA senior expert who's also left the agency since the Bush re-election.

No longer the anonymous author of "Imperial Hubris," 22-year agency veteran Michael Scheuer left the CIA last week, and has been interviewed on "60 Minutes" and yesterday by Lou Dobbs on CNN. The former head of the CIA's Bin Laden Unit, Scheuer noted that the CIA "has been cursed by quite mediocre leadership" at the director and deputy director for operations positions. "It is important that we take the measure of the enemy," he said, and the current popular conception that the viewpoint spouted by Bin Laden is "aimed at destroying the U.S. and its democratic institutions" is flat wrong. Bin Laden is gaining credibility in the Arab world not for his support of terrorism, Scheuer said, but for his assertion that U.S. policies, including its military offensive in Iraq, are profoundly anti-Islamic. Up to 80% to 90% in some quarters of the Arab world believe this, he said.

If he's right, then Rice's approach to the future of the Arab world could not be more off track. But, of yeah, with this administration it's not about being right or wrong but how comfy one can be in the president's ideological lap.

Nicholas Benton may be emailed at nfbenton@fcnp.com