This article on CNN was brought to my attention yesterday. The article itself seems relatively innocuous, except for the fact that it is a denial. My first rule of thumb is that when any government agency, much less one as secretive as the CIA, starts denying that something was said/done/intended is that the polar opposite is true. (Consider the AdScam controversy bubbling around Canada right now...)

However, this article led to a couple of other articles of interest. The first, discusses a series of resignations from top posts in the CIA; the second talks about some firings that have occurred since Porter Goss took over the reigns of the organization.

At first blush, one looks and says - okay, the top player in the organization has changed, and there is going to be a series of changes as people decide whether or not they want to work for the new head.

On the other hand, there seems to be a somewhat ominous tone to the goings-on that make me suspect that there's much more going on here than a simple bit of organizational shake-up. The directorate of the CIA has changed many times in the past, without any major news stories emerging.

If I take the first article, and assume the polar opposite, it suggests that the original memo that is being denied did in fact make stipulations about "backing" Bush - at the very least tacitly. The tone of the statements in the second memo is much more in line with what I would expect the CIA and other similar agencies to do.

The second and third articles piqued my curiousity. At best, I don't trust the players