John LeBoutillier
Monday, Nov. 25, 2002

Everyone has a weakness – a 'soft underbelly' – that can cause them big problems.

Presidents, too, have these weaknesses, which often cause their administrations to falter or fail.

For example, Clinton has a major sex problem – and it will forever be his personal and political legacy.

Richard Nixon was paranoid about the Democrats again stealing a presidential election from him – after what Joe Kennedy, the Mob and Richard Daley did to him in 1960. Thus, he surrounded himself with loyalists, who mirrored his paranoia. The result? Watergate.

Jimmy Carter was trained as a nuclear engineer and thus was too involved in details to grasp the bigger picture. Thus his presidency was 'micro-managed' to such a degree that Carter himself allocated time for staffers to use the White House tennis court! No wonder he failed to see the Big Picture of Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the fall of our ally, the Shah of Iran.

The greatest president of our time – Ronald Reagan – grasped the Big Picture better than anyone else. But he delegated too much power to too many underlings who ultimately had their own agendas. Thus came Iran-Contra – the only negative mark on Old Dutch's eight years in the White House.

The first President Bush – and this President Bush, too – are going to share the same Achilles' Heel: a dirty intelligence 'underworld' that has its own agenda – often at odds with stated public policy.

President Bush I, a former director of the CIA, once called that post the "best job I have ever had." His love for the CIA is mirrored by the CIA's headquarters building being renamed the 'George Bush Center for Intelligence.'

His son – clearly with the guidance of the father – has kept on as DCI (director of Central Intelligence) George Tenet, the only Clintonite still in the same position. Bush I has given Associated Press an interview praising Tenet to the hilt. President Bush II spends more 'face time' with Tenet than any other president has ever spent with their DCI.

Meanwhile, all around us we are witnessing an ongoing series of intelligence failures – beginning with the inability to prevent 9/11, followed by our failure to capture Osama bin Laden.

Along with these two colossal screw-ups are a multitude of other related mistakes: our cover-up of Saudi royal family involvement in the 9/11 attacks and our inability to produce 'hard proof' of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) with which to convince the U.N. and our allies of the necessity to remove Saddam's government.

And this is not even to mention the very strange and "smelly" manipulation of the Czech intelligence report linking lead hijacker Mohammed Atta to Iraqi agents just five months before the 9/11 attacks.

The Bush family loves the CIA – and they love the Saudis, too. Bush I is a partner in the Carlyle Group, which has extensive affairs in Saudi Arabia – and has done business with the Binladen Group (Osama's family's business umbrella), too.

Many believe that our Intel Community is a "government unto itself" and that our elected representatives are hopelessly naοve about what that community is up to.

Personally, I have witnessed the tip of this iceberg – including the amazing spectacle of the CIA placing its operatives 'under cover' on congressional staffs and in other executive branch offices to spy for the CIA!

My guess is that Bush II has little idea of how deeply compromised the executive branch is by the CIA; his father knows, though. In fact, nothing goes on inside this government that Bush I is not aware of – or cannot find out about if he so chooses.

Today Bush II happily signs into law the Homeland Security Bill and names Tom Ridge as the first secretary of that department. But any right-thinking conservative should be aghast at what is happening: new laws designed to 'track' every American's credit card purchases, easy monitoring of our Internet activities and e-mails, a proposed Pentagon Department designed to "lie" to the media, and always even more money given to the CIA.

Meanwhile, no heads have rolled for these intelligence failures. In fact, those failures are glossed over and increased budgets are passed with no questions asked.

Prediction: This situation cannot – and will not – stand. If anything is to undermine the present Bush steamroller, it will be something from the 'Intel Underworld.' Some incident – some lie or cover-up – will burst into the public eye and undermine everything publicly stated by Bush I or Bush II.

That is their Achilles' Heel.

Read John LeBoutillier's bio.

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