Rogue Bureaucrats at State?

One of the great unreported stories of this administration is the existence of rogue elements in the intelligence community and at the State Department, and their refusal to acquiesce to executive authority.

The Anchoress has some interesting questions:

Why was Valerie Plame never investigated by the press?

and

Why is nobody investigating the role of Colin Powell and his acolytes in managing diplomacy after 9/11. She cites AJ Strata who asks:

Were Powell and Armitage running amok at State? Were they strong arming our allies and pretending to these allies all these threats were coming from Bush? Where they all the while telling Bush they were being diplomatic and the backlash was due to something else? The example set in the Plame fiasco, of hiding their true actions from the WH as they ended up being the true leakers to the media, would indicate it is strongly possible that all the international strife the US has faced was due to heavy handedness by State, while State was not being totally honest with Bush on what was happening at the lower levels.

She continues:

Shouldn’t we be looking into why State Dept employees like Mary McCarthy felt so completely easy with the idea of blowing holes into programs meant to protect America?

Read it here.

This sort of thing took place in the early stages of the Cold War, when State and the Military kept President Truman in the dark regarding crucial aspects of our foreign policy. Kennedy and Reagan, too, had problems with recalcitrant elements of the foreign policy establishment. The resistance of the permanent government to political control is an endemic problem for all administrations. It has become acute in recent years as Dubya has tried to bring the bureaucrats to heel. Bureaucrats fight back by leaking and reporters are loath to investigate their prize sources. Hopefully the Plame and Armitage scandals will lead to such investitions, but don't hold your breath.