Michael Scheuer leaves CIA

Dana Priest reports:

Michael Scheuer, the author and former chief of the CIA’s Osama bin Laden unit, announced yesterday that he had resigned from the agency so he could speak openly about terrorism and what he sees as the government’s failure to understand the threat from al Qaeda. “I have concluded that there has not been adequate national debate over the nature of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and the force he leads and inspires, and the nature of the intelligence reform needed to address that threat,” Scheuer, whom the CIA banned from speaking publicly in July, said in a statement issued by his publisher.

Can we define a government that loses its best advisors because it refuses to let them tell the truth as dysfunctional – especially when we are talking about our experts at countering al Qaeda?