HEADS ROLLING? Reader Peter Stanley writes: “The CIA’s counter-terrorism chief Cofer Black was fired today. Just thought you’d like to know.”

Well, the Washington Post didn’t put it quite that way. In its report today it says: “In other developments yesterday, CIA officials said Cofer Black, head of the agency’s Counterterrorism Center for the past three years, has been assigned to another position. They described the move as part of normal turnover at the agency.” Now this might be a punitive transfer with obligatory mealy-mouthedness (though why, exactly, is it obligatory?) but I don’t think it counts as a “firing.”

UPDATE: Stanley writes: “That’s what I get for reading DEBKA.” Yeah. Maybe there’s a backstory to this that would make Debka right — but they don’t have it on their site. It doesn’t look like a firing to me. And if it is a firing, it’s one that’s being handled so quietly (perhaps with Black being eased out after a decent interval) that it barely counts as one at all. Heads must not merely roll, but must be seen to roll.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Bill Clinton is now discounting the importance of warnings about Al Qaeda planning hijackings that we received during the ’90s.