Juan Cole, The CIA and The Bush White House

If this is true, we may be looking at both Constitutional violations, and violations of the CIA charter.

WASHINGTON — A former senior C.I.A. official says that officials in the Bush White House sought damaging personal information on a prominent American critic of the Iraq war in order to discredit him.

Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was a top counterterrorism official during the administration of President George W. Bush, said the White House at least twice asked intelligence officials to gather sensitive information on Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who writes an influential blog that criticized the war.

While intelligence officials are disputing the account, it remains unclear whether any information was ever gathered about Professor Cole, or if anything ever reached the White House. 

Juan Cole writes the widely read blog Informed Comment, and has taught in the History Department at the University of Michigan since 1984. In 2006 a joint appointment by the History and Sociology Departments at Yale University was approved for Professor Cole, but evidently a senior appointments committee at the University overruled those votes and he remains at the University of Michigan.

Needless to say, very disturbing.

Since a series of Watergate-era abuses involving spying on White House political enemies, the C.I.A. and other spy agencies have been prohibited from collecting intelligence concerning the activities of American citizens inside the United States.

“These allegations, if true, raise very troubling questions,” said Jeffrey H. Smith, a former C.I.A. general counsel. “The statute makes it very clear: you can’t spy on Americans.” Mr. Smith added that a 1981 executive order that prohibits the C.I.A. from spying on Americans places tight legal restrictions not only on the agency’s ability to collect information on United States citizens, but also on its retention or dissemination of that data.

Rachel Maddow, herself a PH.D. in Political Science, is on the story and expects to continue reporting on it.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

While it is only The New York Times reporting on this story right now, it is not going to go away.