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The Independent - 30 December 2004
http://news.independent.co.uk/world...sp?story=596782

Head of CIA analysis unit joins exodus of top officials in shake-up

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington

The head of the CIA's analysis unit is being forced from her job as part
of the shake-up being carried out by the agency's new director.

Jami Miscik, the deputy director for intelligence, told her staff on
Tuesday that she will be resigning in the new year. She will be the
latest of half-a-dozen senior officials to resign or else be fired since
Porter Goss became director in September.

Some on Capitol Hill have accused Mr Goss of forcing out career
professionals in order to replace them will political appointees. Mr
Goss's supporters counter that he is merely trying to bring changes to
an agency whose reputation was severely damaged by its failure to
prevent the 9/11 attacks and its faulty intelligence about Saddam
Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction.

Ms Miscik joined the CIA in 1983 and was named deputy director in May
2002, making her responsible for the agency's analysis and the
preparation of the president's daily briefing. It was reported that she
told her staff her resignation was part of a "natural evolution" and
that every intelligence chief "has a desire to have his own team in
place to implement his vision and to offer him counsel".

But Ms Miscik's term as head of analysis was a period of failure at the
CIA as it came under pressure from the Bush administration to provide
evidence that Saddam possessed illegal weapons. Ray McGovern, a former
CIA analyst, said Ms Miscik was the "Condi Rice of the CIA". He added:
"She just went along with whatever she was told and kept her mouth shut.
She is a person who is tarred by the inescapable conclusion that she was
either extremely incompetent or else a tool of the administration."

Her resignation comes amid wider changes within the US intelligence
community. President Bush recently announced a new national intelligence
centre would be created and a new position of national intelligence
director would oversee 15 separate intelligence agencies.

Meanwhile, a report published yesterday said that disagreements between
various US government agencies were hampering efforts to upgrade and
improve the nation's fingerprint database.

The database - the development of which has been questioned by civil
rights groups - is designed to make it more difficult for foreign
criminals to enter the country.

A study carried out by the Justice Department in August found that the
FBI's database could only detect 73 per cent of foreigners with a
criminal record entering the country.

This system is not currently available to the Homeland Security
Department, which relies on its own system known as the Automated
Biometric Identification System, or Ident. The review by the Justice
Department's inspector general, Glenn Fine, said some progress had been
made in developing an integrated system but many problems remained. It
also found that watch lists at borders contained only a portion of the
47 million records in FBI fingerprint files - and that the lists are
prone to error.

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