CAPT. ED SAYS don’t dismiss the CIA tape-destruction scandal.

I don’t know a lot about this, but it’s possible further evidence that I was right to oppose Harriet Miers’ nomination. Well, that’s probably unfair — she opposed destroying the tapes, according to ABC. On the other hand, she’d be a Supreme Court justice now, which would be ticklish. As I argued, the path from White House Counsel to Supreme Court is not one that should be too short.

Should we abolish the CIA? Well, it’s probably too early to draw that conclusion.

UPDATE: A different view from reader Thom Wilder:

I think I preferred the cold war days when congress and the press, and the general public for that matter, had far less knowledge/scrutiny of what the CIA does. Secrecy is the only way an intelligence agency can do its job. If it’s actions are public, as now, then they become a mere political pawn. Can you imagine how the cold war might have turned out without the CIA or SAS having had the ability to perform it’s operations almost entirely out of view and out of scrutiny?

Gitmo and terror interrogation tapes are small potatoes in the larger scheme of things, and they are better off kept secret, as they once were. Just as I don’t trust Congress to run a war via legislated, politically-motivated surrender dates and withholding of troop funding, I don’t trust them to run an intelligence agency via politically-motivated reports and knee-jerks to things like destroyed interrogation tapes. (I’ll take my chances entrusting the Military, and yes the CIA.) I don’t even trust Congress to have a single worthwhile thing to say about it one way or the other.

An intelligence agency by definition must operate in secret, otherwise there is little point to it’s existence, and little hope of actually gathering good intelligence. The CIA is perhaps now just another role-player in the daily political soap-opera that is our two-party travesty of a government has become, written and executive-produced by the left-biased MSM.

The old system rested on a degree of patriotism and self-control that is no longer present in our political class, including the media. It also depended on a willingness to discipline those who departed from the norms. That, too, is absent.