Topic: Washington Examiner
Rowan Scarborough's Sept. 21 Washington Examiner follow-up article on the return of Michael Sulick manages not to be as blatantly slanted as his first effort announcing it on Sept. 14, but it's still pretty clear where Scarborough's sympathies lie.
Scarborough begins the article by featuring Republican Rep. Peter Hoekstra's objections to Sulick's return, calling it "a decision made by Gen. [Michael] Hayden [the current CIA director] that is clearly a poke in the eye of his predecessor, Porter Goss, but more importantly it’s a stick in the eye of the president." Hoekstra added, "Sulick did undercut Porter and Porter’s agenda and thereby undercut the president’s agenda." Scarborough doesn't explain further, even though he's suggesting that by rehiring Sulick, Hayden is not following "the president's agenda."
Only after getting this attack out of the way does Scarborough attend to the fact that "The CIA Thursday provided a fierce defense of the veteran covert officer." But then he returns to his previous mode of painting Goss as a great reformer whose plans faced "stiff opposition from the Langley headquarters." This is followed by quoting Hoekstra asserting, "It’s clear under Gen. Hayden that reform will not take place. ... He’s made his decision that he will buy in with the group of people at the CIA who believed there are no problems at the CIA." Again, no evidence is offered by Scarborough or Hoekstra to support the assertion that CIA employees "believe there are no problems at the CIA" or that the only way to solve those alleged problems was to do whatever Goss ordered.
So, to sum up: Scarborough still loves Goss and hates Sulick, but was possibly, um, encouraged by the Examiner to write a more balanced article about Sulick's rehiring. Scarborough's biases are not as nakedly expressed as they were in his first article, but they are unmistakbly there.
