White House to Investigate Inadvertent Naming of CIA Officer
Posted: May 28, 2014 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Politics, U.S. News, White House | Tags: Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, Denis McDonough, President, Washington Post, White House |
The lobby of the CIA Headquarters Building in McLean, Virginia (Reuters/Larry Downing)
For The Washington Post, Greg Miller, writes: The Obama administration said Tuesday it will seek to determine how the identity of the CIA’s top spy in Afghanistan was exposed in an embarrassing slip by the White House press office during President Obama’s surprise visit to the country on Sunday.White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough has instructed the president’s chief counsel, W. Neil Eggleston, to examine how the CIA officer’s name ended up on a list of U.S. officials who met with Obama in Afghanistan, a document that was then distributed to thousands of journalists and other recipients.
Eggleston has been asked “to look into what happened and report back to [McDonough] with recommendations on how the administration can improve processes and make sure something like this does not happen again,” said Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council.
The move marks an effort by the White House to assure members of the U.S. intelligence community, as well as the public, that it regards the inadvertent disclosure as a security breach serious enough to warrant attention from high-level officials.
The exposure has been a source of embarrassment for the White House at a time when Obama has sought to focus attention on his efforts to bring an end to the war in Afghanistan. On Tuesday, Obama announced that he planned to reduce the U.S. presence there to 9,800 troops and formally end U.S. combat operations by the end of the year.
The exposed station chief is a veteran CIA officer who leads the agency’s largest overseas operation, with hundreds of operatives, analysts and support personnel based in Afghanistan…(read more)
The Washington Post
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