But the above quotes lead me to suspect he was outed as a result of a mutiny by the CIA's rank and file. When the neocon priests at the Weekly Standard groan and the folks at Langley cheer - it's a sure sign that the Feith/Libby crowd has lost a major battle with the intelligence community.

Goss Porter was assigned to the CIA to 'clean house' of dissenters who were unwilling to take the fall for intelligence failures that never happened. It was no secret that the administration didn't take kindly to the agency's 'negative feedback' about the day to day realities of their Iraqi ventures. In short, the professionals in Langley were guilty of demoralizing their neo-con overlords by insisting on doing their job of providing sound analysis to policy makers. It didn't help matters that former CIA analysts were less than enthusiastic about the outing of Valerie Plame.

Under the able leadership of Goss, the neo-cons got their wish and the CIA troublemakers were given their pink slips or quietly opted for early retirement. The rascals had it coming for not being disciplined enough to gracefully take the fall for the bum WMD intelligence that was cooked up by Douglas Feith at his little canard factory - the Office of Special Plans.

We now have a thousand and one reasons to believe that the intelligence was fabricated to provide justification for this disastrous war of choice. We know that Douglas Feith was the man who had primary responsibility for engineering the WMD hoax. The myth about 'intelligence failure' would have been put to rest two years ago if only the mainstream media had dared to ask some very basic questions about the OSP. But we are where we are because they tell us only what they want us to know.

It is only by the grace of neo-con media moguls in high places that we still have to argue about the systematic lies and deception that paved the path to war. Isn't it enough to know that Judith Miller was one of the media operatives who collaborated in disseminating the WMD leaks - with the explicit approval of Arthur Sulzberger, the publisher of the New York Times.

If the general public was less than curious about who exactly was working on the assembly line of Douglas Feith's intelligence manufacturing operation, the folks at Langley knew every little detail about the anatomy of this hoax. Once the war turned into something spectacularly at variance with the cakewalk envisioned by the neo-cons - many CIA agents refused to take the fall for what they regarded as a 'failure of Likudnik fantasies.'

Porter Goss's mission was to make the Langley rebels 'team players.' Unfortunately for Goss and his neo-con brethren - many of the agency's top guns refused to sign up. Some became insubordinate. Others quit. A few went public with their misgivings.

Which brings us back to all the speculation about hookers, gambling and booze. My guess is that a few disgruntled CIA insiders called on their old contacts in the FBI to dig up some dirt on Porter Goss.

For those who think this is far fetched - check out the following extract from an article I published in February of 2004. And ask yourself one question. If your humble servant - who can't place Langley on the map - knew enough to write this two years ago - what did the folks at the CIA know about the so-called 'intelligence hoax.'

Intelligence Failures for Dummies

Why engineer an intelligence failure? When the intelligence community is not giving you the kind of results you desire, a responsible administration needs to find a way to manufacture its own intelligence and make it look like it was cooked at the CIA.

How do you get around the CIA? First, you let Douglas Feith and Wolfie set up their own intelligence unit in the Pentagon and give it a big name like the Office of Special Plans. Make sure the office is staffed with those who share your neo-con agenda.

What next? You need to develop and groom your own independent sources. You get a guy like Chalabi and his imaginary friends to provide you with the exact answers that fit your game plan. Just to make it legitimate, you use a few trusted journalists like Judith 'WMD' Miller of the New York Times to circulate stories confirming your 'findings'. You now have 'double sourcing'

And then what? You challenge the CIA to match your work. Accuse them of timidity. You get Cheney and Libby to breathe down their necks and berate them for missing the Chalabi lead. You point out that Judith Miller is a second source who confirms the Chalabi story. Who can argue with the New York Times?

Isn't this risky business? Not if the war is a cakewalk. Every body loves a winner. Those who made a fuss about the risks will be made to eat crow. We'll just sit back and enjoy reruns of the 'shock and awe' show. Who will hear the detractors over the din of a victory parade?

What if the war ends up being a long hard slog? Well, in that case, we dispatch David Kay to dig up the phantom WMDs. Let him take his own sweet time. The public will be asked to show a little patience.

What happens when Kay doesn't find a trace of WMDs? Well, Dummy, we just stall and send another guy to resume the search. If that doesn't work, we'll just throw a tantrum and blame it on an 'intelligence failure'. Let the CIA take the fall. The President might have to stitch together a bipartisan inquiry staffed by the usual suspects (like Porter Goss.) By the time they set up shop, argue over rules and scope and agree on a list of witnesses, it will be late spring, early summer. The story will die down once it is 'under investigation by the proper authorities'. Look at the 911 probes and the Plame investigation.

What if the public demands an investigation of the OSP, instead of the CIA? By that time, we would have closed our doors, shredded our files and ceased to exist as an intelligence unit.

Isn't it possible that the media boys will smell a rat? If they smell a rat, it will be the stench of their own skin. Can you see the New York Times investigating Judith Miller's role in our little scam? Better still, how likely is it that Bob Woodward of Watergate fame would look into Krauthammer's collaboration with the OSP. They both toil for the Washington Post. The beauty of this whole venture is that we can get our media operatives to turn up the heat on the CIA and put Langley on the defensive. What can the CIA do? Act like a crybaby and say that a few analysts in an obscure Pentagon office managed to bully them.

Can anything go wrong? Not a chance. Intelligence failures happen. We should know. We make them happen. We'll blame the whole thing on Chalabi and his imaginary friends. Chalabi is more than ready to act as the culprit who passed us bum information. He has been accused of worse things. Chalabi is a good sport and not the kind who worries about his reputation.

Notes in the Margins: An internal Pentagon probe and the Senate Intelligence Committee are supposedly investigating Douglas Feith's intelligence manufacturing operation - the OSP. For reasons unknown, no progress has been made in either of these probes. There is also a suspicious lack of interest by Judith Miller's former employers at the New York Times. In the meantime, Douglas J. Feith has just accepted an offer to join the faculty of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. I suggest they assign him to teach "intelligence failures 101."

"He has demonstrated an ability to adapt our intelligence services to the new challenges of the war on terror," said the US leader, flanked by Hayden and his director of national intelligence, John Negroponte.

"He's the right man to lead the CIA at this critical moment in our nation's history."

Hayden, currently Negroponte's deputy, was nominated after Porter Goss abruptly resigned as the CIA director on Friday, after less than two years in the post.

Several top CIA officials resigned during Goss's tenure. Reports said Goss may have been forced out because of turmoil in the agency in the wake of highly publicized intelligence failures related to the September 11, 2001 attacks and intelligence used to justify the
Iraq war.

Many Washington lawmakers have expressed doubts about Hayden's independence from the White House and about whether a military officer, who now answers to the powerful Defense Department, should take over the civilian agency.

Concerns expressed by top Republican and Democratic lawmakers have laid the groundwork for what could be a new battle for the White House with Congress over the nomination.

Some lawmakers were critical of Hayden's involvement in a controversial domestic spying program.

Hayden oversaw the National Security Agency's secret wiretapping without a warrant put in place after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Former CIA director Stansfield Turner, a retired navy admiral, said that Hayden's role in the domestic eavesdropping program spelled trouble for his nomination.

"I think Mike Hayden is extremely well qualified for the job, but there is this big question mark over the legality of the wiretapping that was done under his supervision.

"I happen to think it was illegal," Turner told CBS television.

Representative Peter Hoekstra (news, bio, voting record), the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said the dual roles of spymaster and military officer are incompatible.

"There is no question that general Hayden is an outstanding military officer and a strong leader with a proven history in the intelligence community," Hoekstra said in a statement. He said a civilian head of the CIA is needed in the interest of "balance".

"By placing a military officer atop the CIA ... we risk losing the critical, civilian intelligence analysis that policymakers need when making foreign policy decisions," he said.

Bush said however that he views Hayden's military background as an asset.

"He's held senior positions at the
Pentagon, the US European Command, the National Security Council, and served behind the Iron Curtain in our embassy in Bulgaria during the Cold War," the president said.

"He's overseen the development of both human and technological intelligence. He has demonstrated an ability to adapt our intelligence services to the new challenges in the war on terror."

Director of National Intelligence Negroponte on Monday likewise defended his top deputy to head the CIA, saying he felt certain that Hayden would not cave in to pressure from the Pentagon.

"I think there's a lot of unfounded concerns there," Negroponte said at a White House press conference.

"Mike Hayden is a very, very independent-minded person, blunt spoken," the US intelligence czar said.

Negroponte said the choice of Hayden underscore's the president's commitment to restore morale among the CIA disheartened workers, while improving the "human intelligence" component of the agency's activities.

But Bush's priority, which Negroponte said Hayden is uniquely qualified to oversee, is the international fight against terrorism.

"His most important priority is intelligence on Al-Qaeda and international terrorism," Negroponte told reporters at the White House.

"I think he (the president) wants us to press ahead in the field of tracking down and disabling and harming the international terrorist movement," said Negroponte.

What's wrong with the U.S. intelligence community is that over the past three decades its ethos of telling truth to power has been corrupted by politics to such a degree that George W. Bush now sees the Central Intelligence Agency as virtually his family's fiefdom, with the Langley, Virginia, headquarters even named for his father, George H.W. Bush, a former CIA director.

So, when analysts at the CIA were viewed as undercutting George W. Bush's case for war with Iraq, the White House launched a counter-attack against these intelligence professionals for perceived disloyalty.

During the buildup to the Iraq War, Vice President Dick Cheney personally went to CIA headquarters to bang heads with intelligence analysts who doubted White House claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. While some analysts resisted, many mid-level bureaucrats acquiesced to Cheney.

Paul Pillar, the CIA's senior intelligence analyst for the Middle East, said the Bush administration didn't just play games with the principle of objective analysis, but "turned the entire model upside down."

After quitting the CIA in 2005, Pillar wrote an article in Foreign Affairs magazine stating that "the administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made."

"The Bush administration deviated from the professional standard not only in using policy to drive intelligence, but also in aggressively using intelligence to win public support for its decision to go to war," Pillar wrote. "This meant selectively adducing data - 'cherry-picking' - rather than using the intelligence community's own analytic judgments."

After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq failed to find WMD, some of the suppressed CIA doubts began to surface, embarrassing Bush during Campaign 2004.

At that delicate political moment, Bush installed Goss, a partisan Republican congressman recruited by Cheney, to take over the CIA. The Goss appointment on Sept. 24, 2004, reflected Bush's determination to bring the agency's analytical division into line with his policies both before and after the November 2004 presidential election.

Loyal Henchmen

Like a Medieval ruler punishing a rebellious province, Bush sent in loyal henchmen to root out perceived traitors. Bush's attitude toward CIA analysts who disagreed with his pre-war assertions about Iraq's WMD was much like his anger toward the French for cautioning him about his Iraq invasion plans.

Being right was no protection from Bush's wrath; indeed, it appeared to make him madder. Though Bush has continued to this day to stress how much he values accurate intelligence as vital for the nation's security, his real record has been one of insisting on getting information that fits his preconceptions.

So, rather than reward the CIA analysts who had resisted White House pressure to cook the WMD intelligence on Iraq, Bush set out to remove them. He also took aim at the State Department, another bastion of WMD dissent, where he replaced the diffident Colin Powell with the enthusiastic loyalist Condoleezza Rice.

At the CIA, Bush's intelligence purge gained momentum in the weeks after he secured his second term. Bush saw his victory as almost a mystical validation of his view that the "war on terror" was a conflict between good and evil in which people were either with Bush or with the terrorists. Bush called the election his "accountability moment."

CIA intelligence professionals got the message that they could either get behind Bush's policies or get out. The loyalty demands led to an exodus of senior CIA officials, including deputy CIA chief John E. McLaughlin and deputy director of operations Stephen R. Kappes.

In whipping the remaining intelligence analysts into line, Bush was helped by powerful conservative news personalities - from AM talk radio to Fox News, from right-wing newspaper columnists to Internet bloggers - who conjured up conspiracy theories about a CIA plot to destroy the President.

Conservative columnist David Brooks was among those pushing the argument that the CIA's only rightful role was to serve the President.

"Now that he's been returned to office, President Bush is going to have to differentiate between his opponents and his enemies," wrote Brooks in the New York Times. "His opponents are found in the Democratic Party. His enemies are in certain offices of the Central Intelligence Agency."

To Brooks, the justification for Bush going after the CIA was the release of information that made Bush look bad.

"At the height of the campaign, CIA officials, who are supposed to serve the President and stay out of politics and policy, served up leak after leak to discredit the President's Iraq policy," Brooks wrote.

"In mid-September [2004], somebody leaked a CIA report predicting a gloomy or apocalyptic future for the region. Later that month, a senior CIA official, Paul Pillar, reportedly made comments saying he had long felt the decision to go to war would heighten anti-American animosity in the Arab world." [NYT, Nov. 13, 2004]

On the Mark

Nearly 18 months later, those CIA assessments seem to have been right on the mark, as violence in Iraq continues to spin out of control and the Middle East seethes with hatred toward the United States.

But in November 2004, the victorious President and his conservative allies were set on throttling those intelligence professionals who still believed that their job was to get the information right, not just tell Bush what he wanted to hear.

Indeed, the claim from Bush's supporters that the CIA only existed to "serve the President" was not historically accurate.

While it may be true that the CIA's operations directorate was created as a secret paramilitary arm for the U.S. executive, the CIA's analytical division was established to provide objective information to both the President and other parts of the U.S. government, including Congress.

Even at the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s, the CIA's analytical division took pride in telling presidents what they didn't want to hear - such as debunking Eisenhower's "bomber gap" or Kennedy's "missile gap" or Johnson's faith in the air war against North Vietnam.

Though never perfectly applied, the ethos of objective analysis continued through the mid-1970s. Then, CIA analysis began to come under sustained attack from conservatives and a new group called neoconservatives, who insisted that the Soviet Union was a rapidly expanding military menace with its eye on world conquest.

The CIA analytical division held a more nuanced assessment of the Soviet threat, viewing Moscow as a declining superpower struggling to keep pace with the West while coping with fissures inside its own empire.

This CIA analysis was the background for the "détente strategy" followed by President Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who sought to negotiate arms control and other agreements with the Soviet Union.

Reagan's Emergence

But Nixon's ouster over the Watergate scandal in 1974 and Ronald Reagan's entrance on the national political stage in 1976 altered the political dynamic.

Scared by Reagan's successes in the Republican primaries, President Gerald Ford ordered the word "détente" dropped from the White House lexicon and let then-CIA Director George H.W. Bush open up the CIA's analytical division to an unprecedented challenge from right-wing intellectuals, known as "Team B."

The "Team B" assessment, bringing in old-time Cold Warriors and young neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz, accused the CIA analytical division of systematically underestimating the growing Soviet threat.

In late 1976, to accommodate this powerful conservative wing of the Republican Party, CIA Director Bush adopted a more alarmist CIA estimate of Soviet power.

When Reagan became President in 1981, with Bush as his Vice President, the assault on the CIA's analytical division resumed in earnest. Analysts who balked at the new administration's ideological vision of the Soviet Union as a 10-foot-tall behemoth were shunted aside or forced out of the CIA.

The CIA's once proud Soviet division took the brunt of the attacks. The surviving analysts began ignoring the mounting evidence of a rapid Soviet decline, so as not to contradict the Reagan-Bush justification for an expanded U.S. military budget and for bloody interventions in Third World conflicts from Nicaragua to Afghanistan.

In reality, Moscow couldn't even keep control along its own borders. But the Reagan-Bush pressure on the U.S. intelligence process proved so effective that CIA analysts filtered out the evidence of a Soviet crackup.

Ironically, when the Soviet Empire collapsed in the late 1980s, the CIA took the blame for "missing" one of the most important political events of the Twentieth Century. Ironically, too, Reagan, who had built up the Soviet straw man, got the most credit when it fell down. [For details, see Robert Parry's Secrecy & Privilege.]

Since then, I have talked with CIA veterans who acknowledged that the politicized agency overstated the Soviet threat despite reliable intelligence from their own agents inside the Soviet bloc who were describing the internal problems.

This "intelligence failure" was not just one of misjudgments; it was one of ideological pressure that distorted the Soviet reality to fit with White House policies.

Whipping Boy

In the second Bush administration, which brought back many of the Reagan-Bush neoconservatives, the same pattern recurred. Intelligence was "cherry-picked" to justify policy, rather than letting objective analysis inform the policy.

In effect, Bush made his decisions on "gut" instincts and had evidence compiled to justify his decisions. When Bush's "gut" failed him - such as when he ignored CIA warnings about the 9/11 attacks or when he pushed bogus intelligence on Iraq's WMD - the CIA stood in as the whipping boy, taking the worst of the institutional blame.

By 2005, the CIA was even stripped of its role as the lead agency in the U.S. intelligence community, when Congress created the new position of National Director of Intelligence on the recommendation of the 9/11 Commission.

However, the new post of NDI - directly under the President - didn't address the question of politicization. Nothing was done to rebuild the lost ethos of objective analysis or to reject the notion that the CIA "serves the President."

Bush appointed John Negroponte, a career diplomat considered a Cold War hard-liner, to fill the new position as NDI in April 2005.

Negroponte had served as ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s when the CIA was organizing the contra war against Nicaragua and he represented the United States as U.N. ambassador when the false Iraq WMD case was presented in 2002-2003. In 2004-2005, he was U.S. ambassador in Iraq as sectarian "death squads" emerged as a new threat.

Despite his prominent roles in the Bush administration, Negroponte wasn't viewed as part of the neoconservative inner circle that had pushed the Iraq War. Rather, he fell more into the traditional Cold War camp of hard-nosed operatives who would carry out orders, even ones that stretched the limits of morality.

When Negroponte became NDI, Goss had to face the fact of his diminished role in the intelligence community. Instead of being called Director of Central Intelligence, he became just the CIA director.

Perhaps trying to demonstrate his intense loyalty to George W. Bush, Goss created more turmoil in the CIA by ordering polygraphs of CIA officials in an investigation into who leaked the secret of clandestine CIA prisons in Eastern Europe where terror suspects were interrogated and allegedly tortured.

The polygraphs led to the ouster of veteran CIA officer Mary McCarthy, though she denied leaking the information.

Prostitute Probe

Goss ran into more controversy when his hand-picked executive director, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, became embroiled in the investigation of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-California, who was sentenced in March to more than eight years in prison for accepting $2.4 million in bribes from military contractors.

Foggo was a longtime friend of Brent Wilkes, a contractor mentioned in the Cunningham indictment. Foggo also attended poker games that Wilkes organized at the Watergate and the Westin Grand hotels in Washington.

According to press reports, federal investigators are looking into allegations that the bribery by the military contractors may have included payments for limousines, poker parties and prostitutes. [NYT, May 7, 2006]

Between the disarray from CIA departures and the hint of scandal around Foggo, Goss saw his political stock decline. Negroponte also reportedly felt that Goss was not adapting well to his new subordinate position as just one of many intelligence directors.

Meanwhile, Negroponte faced opposition himself from aggressive neoconservatives who objected to his more tempered assessment of the threat from Iran's nuclear program and his hiring of some intelligence analysts who had objected to Bush's Iraq WMD claims.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. an original signer of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, called for Negroponte's firing because of his Iran assessment and his "abysmal personnel decisions."

In an article for Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times, Gaffney attacked Negroponte for giving top analytical jobs to Thomas Fingar, who had served as assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research, and Kenneth Brill, who was U.S. ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which debunked some of the U.S. and British claims about Iraq seeking enriched uranium from Africa.

The State Department's Office of Intelligence and Research led the dissent against the Iraq WMD case, especially over what turned out to be false claims that Iraq was developing a nuclear bomb. Gaffney specifically faulted Fingar for his testimony against neoconservative favorite John Bolton to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

"Given this background, is it any wonder that Messrs. Negroponte, Fingar and Brill ... gave us the spectacle of absurdly declaring the Iranian regime to be years away from having nuclear weapons?" wrote Gaffney, who was a senior Pentagon official during the Reagan administration.

Gaffney accused Negroponte of giving promotions to "government officials in sensitive positions who actively subvert the President's policies," an apparent reference to Fingar and Brill.

Iran Cold Water

In an interview with NBC News on April 20, Negroponte had cited Iran's limited progress in refining uranium and their use of a cascade of only 164 centrifuges.

"According to the experts that I consult, achieving - getting 164 centrifuges to work is still a long way from having the capacity to manufacture sufficient fissile material for a nuclear weapon," Negroponte said. "Our assessment is that the prospects of an Iranian weapon are still a number of years off, and probably into the next decade."

Expressing a similar view about Iran in a speech at the National Press Club, Negroponte said, "I think it's important that this issue be kept in perspective."

In effect, the DNI was splashing cold water on the more fevered assessment of Iran's nuclear intentions favored by the neoconservatives around Bush.

Still, Negroponte appears to have come out on top in this latest power struggle. On May 5, Bush announced Goss's abrupt resignation, and on May 8, Bush named Negroponte's current deputy, Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, to become CIA chief.

While Negroponte's bureaucratic victory may represent a defeat for the neoconservatives, it's not likely to solve the larger problem of a politicized intelligence community. Though considered more professional than Goss, Negroponte and Hayden still have shown themselves to be loyal to Bush's edicts.

Negroponte sold Bush's Iraq WMD case at the United Nations and sat behind Secretary of State Colin Powell during his infamous presentation to the Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003. While running the National Security Agency, Hayden implemented Bush's warrantless wiretaps of Americans.

Yet, until the larger question of politicization is addressed - until Bush's sense of entitlement over the intelligence community is ended - the problem of the U.S. government's misuse of intelligence is likely to continue.

[For more on the history of CIA politicization, see Consortiumnew.com's "Why U.S. Intelligence Failed, Redux."]

Negroponte apparently has emerged as the victor in this infighting, with his deputy, Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, former head of the National Security Agency, named by White House officials as the likely choice to succeed Goss at CIA. In an indication that the conflict is continuing, however, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Peter Hoekstra, appeared on "Fox News Sunday" to oppose the as-yet-unannounced selection of Hayden, saying that the career military intelligence official has experience only in electronic information-gathering, not in covert operations.

There are no clear policy differences among Negroponte, Rumsfeld, Cambone and Goss. They all share responsibility for the Bush administration's criminal war of aggression in Iraq, and for the debacle that the US occupation of the oil-rich country has become. To some extent, there is an institutional conflict between the Pentagon, which controls 85 percent of the vast intelligence budget, and Negroponte's new agency, established in 2005 to centralize control over all 16 US intelligence agencies, including the CIA.

The immediate impulse for Goss's ouster, however, is his apparent link to the sex and bribery scandal involving former Republican Congressman Randy Cunningham, who resigned from Congress last fall and has been sentenced to prison for steering military contracts to several favored companies in return for cash and other payoffs.

Three major newspapers-the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and San Diego Union-Tribune-have published articles in the last 10 days reporting that the investigation into Cunningham's corrupt practices, once thought to be limited to several defense contractors, had been expanded to include other congressmen and government officials, including the number-three official at the CIA, executive director Kyle (Dusty) Foggo, who was installed in that position by Goss.

One contractor named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Cunningham case, Brent Wilkes of San Diego, California, is reportedly suspected of arranging for a Washington-area limousine company to provide prostitutes for Cunningham. These services were provided in conjunction with weekly poker parties in the capital, attended by Republican politicians, government officials and businessmen, which Wilkes has hosted for the past 15 years. A CIA spokesman has confirmed that Foggo, a boyhood friend of Wilkes, had been a regular at those parties.

Christopher Baker, president of Shirlington Limousine and Transportation Inc., the company which provided the limos for these parties, was awarded a $21 million contract by the Department of Homeland Security last year to provide transportation services for top DHS officials. This was despite Baker's criminal record for drug possession, attempted petty larceny, and two felony charges for attempted robbery and car theft, two personal bankruptcy filings and a tax lien from the Internal Revenue Service, which seized his house in 1998.

The Post said that the source of the allegations against Wilkes and Baker was Mitchell J. Wade, one of the defense contractors who admitted bribing Cunningham. Wade has pled guilty to charges in that case and is cooperating with prosecutors. "Wade said limos would pick up Cunningham and a prostitute and bring them to suites Wilkes maintained at the Watergate Hotel and the Westin Grand in Washington," the newspaper reported. The Union-Tribune cited a statement from Baker's attorney confirming that Baker had provided limousine services for Wilkes's poker parties from 1990 on, but denying any link to prostitution.

Baker's business arrangements with the DHS were highly unusual. In addition to his own criminal record, which would ordinarily make him an unlikely candidate for a contract to transport top officials in charge of US domestic security, Shirlington Limousine was in poor financial shape. It lost a contract with Howard University for non-performance, and was repeatedly sued for non-payment. At a critical time, in April 2004, the company was awarded a $3.8 million DHS contract for which it was the sole bidder. A year later, Baker succeeded in escaping bankruptcy, paying $125,000 to his creditors. In October 2005, his company won a much larger one-year contract for $21.2 million.

A DHS spokesman sought to explain the relationship with the preposterous claim that while the department conducted criminal background checks for all the limousine drivers, no such check was required for the company's owner. The agency was unaware of Baker's long record of petty crime, the official said.

The connections between Foggo and the Cunningham case may go beyond the seedy questions of gambling and prostitution. Several press reports indicate that the CIA inspector general is examining whether Foggo rigged any contracts from the agency to companies associated with Wilkes. Foggo has told his CIA associates that he will follow Goss into retirement, stepping down as the CIA executive director.

The New York Daily News reported Saturday that Goss himself "may have attended Watergate poker parties where bribes and prostitutes were provided to a corrupt congressman," adding that Foggo could soon be indicted in the case. The newspaper cited statements by former CIA operative Larry Johnson, a frequent critic of the Bush administration, that Goss and Foggo "share a fondness for poker and expensive cigars," and that he understood Goss had occasionally attended the parties thrown by Wilkes. According to the News, "One subject of the FBI investigation is a $3 million CIA contract that went to Wilkes to supply bottled water and other goods to CIA operatives in Iraq and Afghanistan, sources said."

While the tabloid newspaper focused attention on sex and bribery, the more establishment press-particularly the New York Times and Washington Post-were careful to distance the Goss resignation as much as possible from the sordid details of the case. The Times went so far as to publish separate articles on the two subjects Sunday, as though it were possible to consider the political conflicts within the Bush administration outside of the gross corruption that is such an essential part of its character.

Foggo is a career CIA mid-level official who was suddenly vaulted into the top ranks when Goss became director and forced out the previous number-three executive, Michael Kostiw, as part of a purge of allegedly anti-Bush officials in the upper reaches of the agency. Foggo reportedly became a Goss crony while serving as chief of logistics at the CIA station in Frankfurt, Germany, during the period when Goss, then chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, was on inspection trips to CIA offices overseas.

Goss's tenure as CIA director has been one of near-continual crisis, particularly the last eight months, since the existence of clandestine CIA detention centers overseas was made public by the Washington Post. This was followed by a frenzied anti-leaking campaign spearheaded by Goss personally, in an effort to find the source of the Post report. Last month, a veteran CIA official in the inspector general's office, Mary McCarthy, was fired only a week before her scheduled retirement, allegedly for failing a lie detector test about contacts with the press, including the Post. But McCarthy has subsequently denied even knowing of the secret prisons, let alone being the source, and CIA officials admitted that there was no evidence against her on that leak.

The nomination of Hayden could prove to be a political time-bomb for the administration, since confirmation hearings would likely feature questioning about his work at the NSA, where he was responsible for the secret electronic surveillance of American citizens, an operation whose existence was revealed to the New York Times in December. This leak produced another high-pressure internal security investigation, although no one has yet been fired or charged with being the source.

The leaks and counter-leaks demonstrate the increasingly Byzantine atmosphere in official Washington. With all political issues funneled through the increasingly dysfunctional channels of a two-party system in which the nominal opposition, the Democratic Party, offers no alternative to the Republicans, policy disputes within the ruling elite cannot find expression in open debate.

Moreover, so great is the chasm between the official rhetoric of the "war on terror" and reality of predatory seizure of oil resources and strategic positions to benefit American imperialist interests, that no one in the Bush administration, Congress or the corporate-controlled media can discuss foreign policy and security issues publicly in a realistic and serious way.

Hanging over all these debates is the question of the 9/11 attacks and the ample warnings that the military and intelligence agencies received in advance. After countless toothless investigations, not a single top official has been punished for what was either colossal incompetence or deliberate malfeasance. Instead, the conflicts within the intelligence apparatus are taking on the character of a veiled struggle within a palace court.

AMY GOODMAN: We return now to the rare news conference held by General Michael Hayden, the Deputy Director of National Intelligence and former head of the N.S.A., speaking to reporters and others on Monday in Washington, D.C., as part of a public relations offensive by the Bush administration to defend the N.S.A.'s eavesdropping on American citizens without court warrant.

In a separate speech later in the day, President Bush repeated his argument. He had the legal and constitutional authority to authorize the program without congressional approval. Meanwhile, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is scheduled to discuss the legal justification for the program today. And on Wednesday, President Bush will pay a rare visit to N.S.A. headquarters at Fort Meade in Maryland. But it was General Hayden who launched the media offensive Monday morning. These are the excerpts of the news conference, beginning with Hayden being questioned by a reporter.

REPORTER: General Hayden, the FISA law says that the N.S.A. can do intercepts, as long as you go to the court within 72 hours to get a warrant. I understood you to say that you are aggressively using FISA, but selectively doing so. Why are you not able to go to FISA, as the law requires, in all cases? And if the law is outdated, why haven't you asked Congress to update it?

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: If FISA worked just as well, why wouldn't I use FISA? To save typing? No. There is an operational impact here. And I have two -- two paths in front of me, both of them lawful: one, FISA; one, the President's authorization. And we go down this path because our operational judgment is: It is much more effective. So we do it for that reason. I think I got -- I think I've covered all the ones you raised.

REPORTER: Quick follow-up. Are you saying the sheer volume of warrant-less eavesdropping has made FISA inoperative?

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: No. I'm saying that the characteristics we need to do what this program is designed to do, to detect and prevent, okay, make FISA a less useful tool. It's a wonderful tool, it's a wonderful thing for the nation, in terms of fighting the war on terror, but in this particular challenge, this particular aspect, detect and prevent attacks, what we're doing now is operationally more relevant, operationally more effective.

SAM HUSSEINI: Sam Husseini from IPA Media. You just now spoke of, quote, "two paths." But, of course, the FISA statute itself says that it will be the exclusive means by which electronics surveillance may be pursued. Are you not, therefore, violating the law?

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: That's probably a question I should deflect to the Department of Justice. But as I said in my comments, I have an order whose lawfulness has been attested to by the Attorney General, an order whose lawfulness has been attested to by N.S.A. lawyers who do this for a living. No, we're not violating the law.

SAM HUSSEINI: You cited before the congressional powers of the President. Are you asserting inherent so-called constitutional powers that a -- to use a term that came up in the Alito hearings -- a unitary executive has to violate the law when he deems fit?

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: I'm not asserting anything. I'm asserting that N.S.A. is doing its job.

MINISTER: General, first, thank you for your comments, and I think you somewhat answered this in your response. And this goes to the culture and just to the average American. Let me just say this, that domestic spying -- and the faith communities are outraged. Churches in Iowa, churches in Nebraska, mosques across the board are just outraged by the fact that our country could be spying on us. You made a point that the young lady at State Penn shouldn't have to worry, but we're worried that our country has begun to spy on us. We understand the need for terrorism and the need to deal with that. But what assurances, and how can you answer this question -- what can make Americans feel safe? How can the faith community feel safe that their country is not spying on them for any reason?

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: Reverend, thanks for the question. I'm part of the faith community, too. And I've laid it out as well as I could in my remarks here, as to how limited and focused this program is, what its purpose is, that it's been productive. We are not out there -- and again, let me use a phrase I used in the comments -- this isn't a drift net out there where we're soaking up everyone's communications. We're going after very specific communications that our professional judgment tells us we have reason to believe are those associated with people who want to kill Americans . That's what we're doing.

And I realize the challenge we have. I mentioned earlier, the existential issue that N.S.A. has, well before this program, that it's got to be powerful if it's going protect us. And it's also got be secretive if it's going to protect us. And that creates a tremendous dilemma. I understand that. I'm disappointed, I guess, that -- that perhaps the default response for some is to assume the worst.

I'm trying to communicate to you that the people who are doing this, okay, go shopping in Glen Bernie, and their kids play soccer in Laurel, and they know the law. They know American privacy better than the average American, and they're dedicated to it. So I -- I guess the message that I'd ask you to take back to your communities is the same one I take back to mine: This is focused. It's targeted. It's very carefully done. You shouldn't worry.

MINISTER: Just know, General, that the faith communities will take that back, but the faith communities are scared. Where does this stop?

JUSTINE REDMAN: Justine Redman with CNN. How was the national security harmed by The New York Times reporting on this program? Don't the bad guys already assume that they're being monitored anyway, and shouldn't Americans bear in mind that they might be at any time?

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: You know, we've had this question asked several times. Public discussion of how we determine al-Qaeda intentions -- I just -- I can't see how that can do anything but harm the security of the nation. And I know people say, 'Well, they know they're being monitored.' Well, you know, they don't always act like they know they're being monitored. But if you want to shove it in their face constantly, it's bound to have an impact. And so, to -- I understand, as the reverend's question just raised, there are issues here that the American people are deeply concerned with. But constant revelations and speculation and connecting the dots in ways that I find unimaginable and laying that out there for our enemy to see cannot help but diminish our ability to detect and prevent attacks.

TRAVIS MORALES: My name is Travis Morales, and we've read numerous reports in the Times and other papers about massive spying by the N.S.A. on millions of people, along with reports on rendition, torture, etc., and I attended Congressman Conyers's hearings on Friday, where a gentleman came from South Florida talking about how military intelligence went and infiltrated his Quaker peace group, and that this -- they later saw the documents detailing that.

And my question -- I guess I have two questions for you. One is, as a participant in a group called the World Can't Wait: Drive Out the Bush Regime, which is organizing for people to drown out Bush's lies during the State of the Union, and there's a gathering on February 4 demanding that Bush step down, my question is this: Are you or the N.S.A. -- when I say you, I mean the N.S.A. in its entirety -- is it intercepting our email communications, listening to our telephone conversations, etc.? Because, as Bush has said, you're either against us or you're with us, and they have asserted that whatever the President wants to do in time of war, whether it's holding people without charges or writing memos justifying torture, they can do that.

My second question is this, related to that. I publicly challenge you and the N.S.A. to an open debate, a public open debate, that people can gather and listen to your responses, a debate on this warrant-less wiretapping and spying on millions of people that have gone on across this country, because as the reverend said, millions and millions of people are outraged. That is why people are talking impeachment. That is why people are demanding that Bush step down, because of this massive spying, the torture, the rendition, and everything else. So I challenge you to a public and open debate on these questions.

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: What was the question?

TRAVIS MORALES: Will you openly and publicly debate us, myself, in a forum that's open to the public, not restricted, on the N.S.A. spying scandal and defend what has been said and respond to the numerous reports about the N.S.A. spying on millions of people? That is one question. The second question is: Are you spying on or intercepting our communications, e-mails and telephone conversations, of those of us who are organizing the World Can't Wait to Drive Out the Bush Regime?

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: You know, I tried to make this as clear as I could in my prepared remarks. I said this isn't a drift net. I said we're not out there sucking up comms and then using some of these magically alleged key word searches. 'Did he say jihad? Let's get --' That is not -- do you know how much time Americans spend on the phone in international calls alone? Okay? In 2003, our citizenry was on the phone in international calls alone for 200 billion minutes. I mean, beyond the ethical considerations involved here, there are some practical considerations about being a drift net. This is targeted. This is focused. This is about al-Qaeda.

The other request about a public debate, as I mentioned at the beginning of my prepared remarks, this is a somewhat uncomfortable position for someone in my profession to be in, laying out details of the program. One way of describing what you have invited me to would be why don't you come out and tell the world how you're catching al-Qaeda? And I can't do that. That would be professionally irresponsible.

JAMES ROSEN: Excuse me, James Rosen, McClatchy Newspapers. General, you said that if this program had been in place before 9/11, you're pretty confident that you would have detected at least some of the hijackers' presence in the United States and maybe stopped the attack. If that's the case, why is this limited to communications where one person is overseas? Isn't it more urgent, even more urgent, if you've got communications within the United States between two people who might have al-Qaeda links, and why aren't you pursuing that? And a second sort of linked question is, on the 72 hours, if what you said is true, if I understood it, then I and I think a lot of the other reporters have been misreporting this.

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: Yeah.

JAMES ROSEN: Can you explain on the 72 hours and the lack of the free press? Because you said it's not true, but you didn't explain why it's not true.

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: I'm sorry. To be very clear, we throw the language out, and we all maybe lose precision as we do it. N.S.A. just can't go up on a number for 72 hours while it finishes out the paperwork. The Attorney General is the only one who can authorize what's called an emergency FISA. That's what we're talking about there, alright? So it's not -- my point was, that's not something that N.S.A., under the FISA Act, can do on its own. And the first question was, I'm sorry?

JAMES ROSEN: Just a quick follow-up on that. I mean, can it be as quick as you call the Attorney General or the N.S.A. director calls the Attorney General, says, "We've got to go up now." And he says, "Okay. Fill out the paperwork"?

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: The standard the Attorney General must have is that he has sufficient evidence in front of him that he believes he can substantiate that in front of the FISA court.

JAMES ROSEN: Why isn't it even more urgent to monitor communications of two al-Qaeda folks within the United States?

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: Okay, primarily because N.S.A. is a foreign intelligence agency, alright? And this is about -- what we've talked about here today is about foreign intelligence. It's also about, as I tried to suggest in my comments, a balancing between security and liberty. And one of the decisions that have been made collectively, and certainly I personally support it, it's that one way we have balanced this is that we are talking about international communications, so it not only plays to the strength of N.S.A., it's an attempt to balance these consistent continuing legitimate questions of security and liberty. If we were to be drilled down on a specific individual to the degree that the judgment was we need all comms, we need domestic to domestic, that's the route we go through the FISA court in order to do that.

JAMES ROSEN: Okay. Thank you.

JOHN DIAMOND: General, John Diamond, USA Today. There are many things, it seems to me, that presidents can assert they can do without congressional approval. Nevertheless, they seek congressional approval. There are presidents who have consistently argued that the War Powers Act does not apply, that they have the power to send troops into action, etc. And yet, it's felt that for the sense of national unity, the correct thing to do is to go to Congress and get approval.

You laid out an argument today, the urgency of the situation, the reasonableness, the numerous lawyers who have approved it, this would suggest strongly that had it been presented to Congress, Congress would have approved it, would have agreed with the reasonableness of it. And there's a suggestion that by not going to Congress, except to merely inform a very limited number of members, the unspoken message was: We don't feel we could have gotten the approval. The other potential message is that the secret would have leaked out, which seems to be a disturbing message, if that's what you're saying, that the committees, the oversight committees, the intelligence oversight committees can't keep a secret. Sorry for the longwinded --

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: Well, let me take a run, though. We did brief Congress, John, as you know. It's been announced more than a dozen times. I've been the briefer. Every time that's happened, I've been there. And my intent there, in ways less restrictive than I've had to operate here, was to make sure that the people in the room fully understood what had been authorized and what we had been doing.

EVELYN CALDWELL: Evelyn Caldwell with Pacifica Radio. You said that you used your top counsel in the planning process to tell you if this was legal and appropriate back in 2001. What exactly did your counsel tell you, that it was within guidelines and within the law, constitutional law?

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: Yeah, and it was in a group answer. And all three came back, saying that they believe this was lawful, that it was a lawful order that had been authorized by the President that was within his authorities to authorize this activity.

JAMES BAMFORD: Jim Bamford. Good seeing you here in the Press Club, General. It would be good to see more of you here. Just to clarify sort of what's been said, from what I've heard you say here today in an earlier press conference, the change from going around the FISA law was to -- one of them was to lower the standard from what they called for, which is basically probable cause to reasonable basis, and then to take it away from a federal court judge, the FISA court judge, and hand it over to a shift supervisor at N.S.A. Is that what we're talking about here, just for clarification?

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: Yeah. You got most of it right. The people who make the judgment -- and the one you just referred to, there are only a handful of people at N.S.A. who can make that decision. They're all senior executives. They are all counterterrorism and al-Qaeda experts. So even though I - you're actually quoting me back, Jim, saying shift supervisor -- to be more precise in what you just described, the person who makes that decision, very small handful, senior executives, so in military terms, a senior colonel or general officer equivalent, and in professional terms, people who know more about this than anyone else.

JAMES BAMFORD: Well, no. That wasn't the real question. The question I was asking, though, was since you lowered the standard, doesn't that decrease the protections of the U.S. citizens. And number two, if you could give us some idea of the genesis of this, did you come up with the idea? Did somebody in the White House come up with the idea? Where did the idea originate from?

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: Let me just take the first one, Jim, and I'm not going to talk about the process by which the President arrived at his decision. I think you have accurately described the criteria under which this operates. And I think I at least tried to accurately describe changed circumstance, threat to the nation, and why this approach, limited, focused, has been effective.

JONATHAN LANDAY: Jonathan Landay with Knight Ridder. I'd like to stay on the same issue. And that has to do with the standard by which you use to target your wiretaps. I'm no lawyer, but my understanding is that the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution specifies that you must have probable cause to be able to do a search that does not violate an American's right against unlawful searches and seizures.

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: Actually, the Fourth Amendment actually protects all of us against unreasonable search and seizure. That's what it says.

JONATHAN LANDAY: But the measure is probable cause, I believe.

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: The amendment says unreasonable search and seizure.

JONATHAN LANDAY: But does it not say probable --

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: No.

JONATHAN LANDAY: The court standard, the legal standard --

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: The amendment says unreasonable search and seizure.

JONATHAN LANDAY: The legal standard is probable cause, General. You used the terms just a few minutes ago, "We reasonably believe." And a FISA court, my understanding is, would not give you a warrant if you went before them and say "We reasonably believe." You have to go to the FISA court or the Attorney General has to go to the FISA court and say, "We have probable cause." And so what many people believe, and I would like you to respond to this, is that what you have actually done is crafted a detour around the FISA court by creating a new standard of "reasonably believe" in place of "probable cause," because the FISA court will not give you a warrant based on reasonable belief. You have to show a probable cause. Can you respond to that, please?

GEN. MICHAEL HAYDEN: Sure. I didn't craft the authorization. I am responding to a lawful order, alright? The Attorney General has averred to the lawfulness of the order. Just to be very clear, okay -- and believe me, if there's any amendment to the Constitution that employees at the National Security Agency is familiar with, it's the fourth, alright? And it is a reasonableness standard in the Fourth Amendment. So, what you've raised to me -- and I'm not a lawyer and don't want to become one -- but what you've raised to me is, in terms of quoting the Fourth Amendment, is an issue of the Constitution. The constitutional standard is reasonable. And we believe -- I am convinced that we're lawful because what it is we're doing is reasonable.

AMY GOODMAN: The Deputy Director of National Intelligence, former head of the National Security Agency, Michael Hayden, being questioned yesterday at the National Press Club. That last reporter, after Jim Bamford asked his question, was Jonathan Landay of Knight Ridder, editor and publisher pointing out, well, this is the Fourth Amendment: the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized. We are going wrap up with Jim Bamford, live in our Washington studio. Your response to this questioning, Jim Bamford?

JAMES BAMFORD: Well, Amy, that is really the key issue here, because what seems to be happening is that the Bush administration, the Attorney General, General Hayden have all taken it upon themselves to violate the law. The law that was set up by Congress called for a probable cause -- issuing of a probable cause and taking that to the FISA court. And what they've done is say, 'We don't believe in that. We want to lower the standard -- which encompasses far greater numbers of people -- lower the standard to reasonable belief.' And because they couldn't go into a court and argue, 'We just have a reason to believe this is taking place,' the court would say, 'Well, that's not good enough; we want you to have a probable cause' -- they decided simply to violate the law. And that, I think, is something that has to be decided in the court or by a special prosecutor.

AMY GOODMAN: Jim Bamford, we just have 30 seconds. President Bush is going to the N.S.A. as part of his P.R. campaign this week, pushing his spying program. How rare is this to go to this top secret agency?

JAMES BAMFORD: Usually, a president once during his term will go to the N.S.A. President Bush went there a couple of years ago, I think, actually around 2002, right around the same time he decided to issue his very secret order. So this will be the second time. But this time it's being done for public relations reasons. I think this is one of the other tragedies, is the fact that the director of the National Security Agency, for the very first time, is being used sort of as a political ploy in the administration's public relations machine this week.

AMY GOODMAN: Jim Bamford, thanks so much for being with us. James Bamford is, well, suing the government over potentially possibly spying on him, an author of several books on the National Security Agency. This poll, pointed out by Editor and Publisher, a new Gallup poll released Monday showed 51% of Americans said the administration is wrong to intercept conversations involving a party inside the U.S. without a warrant. In response to another question, 58% said they support the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the spy program.

Upon learning of the programme - from a story in The New York Times - Democrats and Republicans voiced concern or outright criticism. Initially, the Bush White House was defensive - but then it fought back hard. It accused its critics of being opposed to a "terrorist surveillance programme", ignoring the nuanced point that these critics favoured surveillance programmes as long as they abided by existing laws. Vice President Dick Cheney, in particularly, was demagogic on this point, claiming that the critics supported al-Qaeda's ability to communicate within the United States. In the face of the administration's fierce counterattack, many members of Congress backed off.

Hayden was one of the most ardent defenders of the programme, though he eschewed the rhetorical excesses that Cheney deployed. In appearances before Congress, Hayden argued that it was necessary to resort to warrantless eavesdropping because US officials pursuing terrorist suspects would otherwise lose precious time filling out the paperwork for wiretap requests. But the law already allowed US investigators to obtain a wiretap without a warrant in emergencies - as long as they filed a request (within three days) with the court overseeing wiretaps. Hayden's misleading explanation prompted speculation that the programme went further than the media reports indicated. Months later, the full shape of the programme Hayden oversaw remains unknown to the public.

What is clear is that the White House has concluded that the exposure of its warrantless wiretap programme was not a political liability but a potential asset. Bush aides decided that they could sell the programme as a demonstration of Bush's commitment to protecting Americans from terrorists. They maintained it was legal and derided those who raised civil liberties issues as being more concerned with the rights of the evildoers than the safety of the United States. At a time when the American public has turned against Bush and his war, this was the sort of debate the White House much desired.

With the Hayden nomination, Bush is saying, "Bring 'em on." The White House can expect members of the Senate, which has to confirm Hayden before he can serve, to revive their complaints about the warrantless wiretapping programme, and then the White House can respond with its favorite line: Bush cares so much about safeguarding America from the terrorists that, yes, he will not hesitate to adopt the most serious measures.

If the Hayden confirmation process comes to be dominated by the wiretap question, that will be unfortunate. There is much else to consider. The CIA seems to be falling apart, with both senior and junior officers fleeing in what appears to be record numbers. The agency failed before 9/11 and then it botched the Iraq WMD question (and did nothing as Bush aides overstated the already overstated intelligence in the run-up to the war). It has generated controversy, scandal and ill will around the world with its rendition programme and secret prisons. In these dangerous days, the United States - and the world - actually need a CIA that is effective in uncovering actual threats and real plots and that operates within certain bounds of probity.

The Hayden confirmation process will afford the Senate a rare opportunity to explore many contentious and crucial issues. It would be a pity if it becomes no more than a platform for the Bush administration to bash its critics for helping bin Laden make phone calls to America.

No matter how big the affair grows, though, it is likely to follow in the path of so many of its predecessors-distracting public attention from a larger and more important reality: Today, "the largest corruption scandal in a century" is not WatergateGate-it is the everyday performance of the U.S. government. The worst sleaze in Washington is mainly legal, as the old saying goes; and that includes the sorry state of the entire intelligence apparatus-beyond whether the #3 CIA official improperly participated in those late-night, high-stakes card games.

Too many in the media treat a juicy mess like the Cunningham Affair as a shocking aberration. Consider the wording in a New York Times article on Sunday, which described "a growing suspicion among some lawmakers that corrupt practices may have influenced decision-making in Congress and at executive-branch agencies."

Who would have thought? Don't the editors read their own paper? It's been clear for some time that corruption in the Bush administration has exceeded a Washington standard that already was pretty tawdry. Some of the stories are known already, especially to TomPaine.com readers: White House procurement chief taken out in handcuffs in connection with a sprawling lobbying corruption investigation; the vice president's chief of staff indicted for perjury; the unseemly setup between Bush's first FEMA director and Brownie, the incompetent neophyte who replaced him.

But many of the larger misdeeds have gone unreported, in part because-technically illegal or not-they represent business as usual in Republican Washington today. Virtually every federal agency is now captive to the corporate interests it is supposed to regulate. The reach of corporate influence has even compromised the science agencies on whose fact-finding and truth-telling crucial questions of national safety and even survival depend.

And then there is Congress. A quick comparison of committee activity and floor votes with campaign finance reports tells the story. Never mind the now-controversial "earmarks," in which legislators secretly slip goodies at the last minute into larger bill packages. The real scandal is going on in plain sight. The entities that give the most get the most-and the goodies keep on coming. That outfits like Halliburton can survive a never-ending series of contracting horror shows with their federal contacts intact says a lot about Congress's willful abrogation of fiduciary duty on behalf of the taxpayer.

The main mistake Randy Cunningham made was accepting the goodies while he was still in Congress. There is no crime involved in doing the exact same favors for government contractors, and later joining the company's board or getting hired as a highly-paid lobbyist, or getting payback on a more indirect basis. That's the deal all over town, and some of the most "well-respected" names in America have such arrangements-and not all of them are Republicans. The whole thing stinks, but what to do about it? That's the rub.

Speaking of a rub, besides the careless greed, in the Cunningham Caper we are blessed by the emergence of a sexual angle worthy of a British tabloid, with the congressman alleged to have enjoyed the favors of big-league prostitutes in return for military contracts. Sexual peccadilloes always get the public's attention in a way that other misdeeds, like accepting bribes from defense contractors, cannot. That Cunningham and his buddies may have preferred presumably-discreet professional company over out-of-wedlock friends of the Gennifer Flowers ilk, makes perfect sense in an atmosphere where holier-than-thou sanctimony cannot bear scrutiny. That might take the story to a new level, since these sins would have been committed by the staunchest defenders of the "sanctity of marriage."

Those who care about the ever more brazen sellout of the public interest over the last five years have no choice but to take these revelations in whatever garb they come-and if they're scantily clad, so be it. Meanwhile, consorting with prostitutes-the thing that will get perhaps get the most attention-is the one thing that matters least to the future of our body politic.

With this new WatergateGate, we must at all costs beware the Woodward Fallacy-that sanitation is a substitute for politics and ideas. It is the conceit of the reigning elite. But in fact we can get rid of Cunningham and his cronies and the rot will continue, unless change goes much deeper to the root.