In looking at the CIA tape timeline at TPM here
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004872.phpI remembered that Tenet left on June 3 of 2004 under a surprise announcement (along with the director of operations):
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5129314/Then, there was a purge of the CIA:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45940-2005Jan3.htmlDubious Purge at the CIA
Porter Goss, the new CIA director and a devoted political ally of President Bush, has brought with him to Langley a Praetorian Guard from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Against the backdrop of his hands-off management style, they are making it clear, without much tact or subtlety, what their goal is: They have come to shake the place up.
Whatever is going on, it is at the behest of the White House, and it probably does not focus on faulty intelligence about weapons of mass destruction but rather on the conduct of the Iraq war and its aftermath. In that context, the administration's wrath seems directed toward the clandestine service, that component of the CIA that recruits and handles spies (not the component that publishes intelligence estimates). Since Goss's arrival in Langley, much of the senior management of the clandestine service has been fired or has quit, reportedly to be replaced with more compliant officials.
David Brooks of the New York Times wrote in a vituperative column in mid-November that we were viewing a death struggle between the White House and the CIA. He claimed that the CIA had been trying to contribute to the president's defeat in the election by leaking classified material designed to bolster the idea that the Iraq policy was ill-conceived and going badly. Apparently, that idea was absolutely correct.
It appears that the CIA, both the clandestine service and the intelligence directorate, had indeed been leaking a wide variety of secrets. They could and should have been prosecuted for the unauthorized disclosure of classified information. They were not. Instead, it appears that the administration has found in their actions a welcome excuse for collective punishment of the CIA.
(end snip)
Was the purge related to the tapes? was (slam dunk)Tenet's resignation? Was the purge related to the WH ordering the destruction of the tapes? I am just thinking outloud here. IIRC.