On Thursday last, the New York Times reported that CIA Director Michael Hayden has initiated an unusual investigation into the activities of the CIA’s Inspector General’s Office.

According to the Times, all this stems from criticism by that office of the CIA’s performance pre-9/11, and from “aggressive investigations” of “detention and interrogation programs and other matters.”

But, as MacRanger points out, it was Inspector General John L. Helgerson who personally recruited the same Mary O. McCarthy who was fired in April of 2006 for leaking information on covert counter-terrorism operations to Washington Post reporter Dana Priest.

AJStrata thinks the Times is spinning, and agrees that this story is really about CIA internal efforts finally to do something about the partisan leaks of highly classified national security information to the press by adversaries of the Administration within the agency.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we aren’t beginning to see some reciprocity, in the form of the Agency actually doing something about the most outrageous leaks, in return for the Bush Administration’s surrender, its abandonment of efforts to reform the Agency, and the reinstatement of Stephen R. Kappes and Michael Sulick.

Michael J. Sulick in 2005

The question about who’s really in charge in Washington has been settled. The amateurs who came to town after the election of the year 2000 and started interfering with the professionals and experts making up the real government have been put in their place or made to resign, and it’s back to business as usual in the interval of waiting for the next democrat party administration to arrive.

Ken Timmerman reports:

The Central Intelligence Agency announced on Friday that it was calling back from retirement a controversial former operations officer to head the National Clandestine Service, three years after he left the Agency to protest reforms being put in place by then-CIA Director Porter Goss.

Michael J. Sulick was associate deputy director for operations at the time he resigned in November 2004 along with his boss, Stephen R. Kappes.

The Wall Street Journal called their bitter fight with Porter Goss and his aides over Agency reform “an insurgency,” although both Kappes and Sulick were praised by Rep. Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, who became a fierce critic of Goss and his reforms.

Sulick’s return was praised by John McLaughlin, who as acting CIA director in July 2004 was involved in his earlier appointment, prior to the clash with Goss.

“Mike Sulick’s return is a big plus for the agency,” McLaughlin told NewsMax. “He is open to new ideas, but espionage in the classic sense has been around since biblical times and — while novelty is always welcome — there’s a lot to be said for the proven experience that Mike Sulick brings to the table. “

The National Clandestine Service, formerly known as the Directorate of Operations, is the Agency’s elite corps of spies.

When Goss took over the Agency in September 2004, he sought to revitalize the clandestine service and weed out “dead wood” operators who were the product of an “old boys network” that failed to recruit spies in difficult overseas environments.

But he ran into fierce opposition from Kappes, Sulick and other products of the CIA “old guard,” who objected to Goss’s efforts to reform the operations directorate and bring it under his control.

As I will reveal in my upcoming book, “Shadow Warriors: Traitors, Saboteurs, and the Party of Surrender,” Kappes had been implicated in a serious security breach at a CIA station overseas, but was never disciplined by the Agency.

Furthermore, both he and Sulick were engaged in activities to lobby members of Congress in their own districts that violated U.S. law. When Goss tried to discipline them, the two men resigned in protest.

Sulick’s message sends a “terrible message” to CIA officers who are trying to do their job and stay out of politics, and suggests that the CIA bench is so thin they have no other candidates for the critical job as head of the Clandestine Service, former agency officers said.

Goss was trying to change the “culture” of the DO, where Clandestine officers were promoted for the number of foreign sources they recruited, not the quality of their information.

Sulick and Kappes earned a reputation as political infighters, who fiercely opposed the policies of the Bush administration in the war on terror and the war in Iraq.

“Sulick’s appointment is an unbelievable slap at the president,” a congressional source told NewsMax over the weekend.

Michael J. Sulick bio.