Between Two Worlds

My oh my. It seems to me that if you work for the CIA, you should--at minimum--have the ability to keep a secret. But for a number of CIAers, classified information should be shared as long as it has the potential to damage the President. Note this news excerpt below about Director Porter Goss's attempt to crack down on the leaking. As you read it, remember that Goss's internal memo is classified--and yet even its contents have been leaked!

The director of the CIA has launched a major internal probe into media leaks about covert operations. In an agencywide e-mail, Porter Goss blamed "a very small number of people" for leaks about secret CIA operations that, in his words, "do damage to the credibility of the agency."

According to people familiar with the Goss e-mail, sent in late January and classified secret, the CIA director warned that any CIA officer deemed suspect by the agency's Office of Security and its Counter Intelligence Center (which handles internal affairs) could be subjected to an unscheduled lie detector test.

Goss told CIA employees there were ways other than talking to the news media to resolve any issues they had with classified CIA operations.