At bottom, the CIA is still just a bureaucracy with the same tendencies and biases as other bureaucracies and perhaps just a tad more hubris.

The “shadow government” isn’t really very shadowy. The national security establishment or “military industrial complex” - whatever you want to call it pokes its nose in several places it doesn’t belong -like policymaking. All Presidents have had to deal with it in one way or another - just not to this degree.

Your intimation that the CIA is a player in foreign affairs, rather than an information gatherer, neutral in this nation’s politics, leads straight to the conclusion that there is a shadow government with no checks or balances influencing the outcome of our national policies. This is at the very least disconcerting.

It seems the only way any administration can counter this kind of adversary is to bring it into the open, possibly in a court battle involving a staffer such as Libby. But it also seems that the cloak of national security protects the “shadow government” from ever being pushed into the open. You have opened a fine kettle of fish with your opining. As a citizen who believes in the tenets of the U.S. Constitution and still holds a polyannish view of the principles upon which this country was established, I truly hope you are wrong. I probably wouldn’t post this if I wasn’t so afraid that your logic seems well founded.