Word: blair
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...disputes may seem arcane to those outside the intelligence community, but many in the CIA were alarmed by what they saw as Blair's interference in the agency's operations. "For some, this was an existential threat. If Blair was allowed to control covert ops, then how long before the whole of the CIA was absorbed into the DNI?" says a former operations official who retired from the agency last year. "Everyone was looking to Panetta to prevent that from happening." (See who's who on the CIA payroll...
...director, a veteran of Washington battles, is getting credit for beating back Blair, a retired Admiral. "Panetta showed he knows how to stamp on toes in this town," says the retired operations official. "[These] victories have reassured some of the doubters in Langley...
...turf battles with Blair have resulted in Panetta's being seen in a more positive light, and focused some criticism on Blair instead. "Denny's a good guy, but he should really focus on being the President's principal intelligence adviser, not on the operational stuff," says an Administration official. "Leon, of all people, certainly doesn't need to be micromanaged - and neither do the CIA folks in the field...
...join the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq despite vocal opposition from antiwar activists at home, as well as a host of countries around the world. Years later, the bloody conflict, which claimed the lives of 179 British soldiers, remains deeply divisive in Britain. Revelations about former Prime Minister Tony Blair's intentions in the run-up to the war, as well as the views of military commanders during the fighting, continue to make front-page headlines and dominate the national debate...
...This is not the first inquiry into the war. In 2003, the Hutton Inquiry examined the reasons behind the suicide of a British government scientist who had been the source of media reports claiming that Blair had "sexed up" intelligence assessments of Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction program before the war. In 2004, the Butler Review into prewar British intelligence reports concluded that key information used to justify the war had been unreliable and that British intelligence services were guilty of a number of failings. In the U.S., a 2004 Republican-led Senate report on U.S. prewar intelligence-gathering...