Miscik knew the report - it was about the complex, often catalytic
connections between the war in Iraq and the wider war against terrorism. The
item that the Vice President wanted declassified was a small part that might
lead one to believe that the war was helping the broader campaign against
violent jihadists. The report, she knew, concluded nothing of the sort. Many of
its conclusions flowed in the opposite direction. To release that small segment
would be willfully misleading. She told the briefer to tell Cheney that she
didn't think that was such a good idea.

The Vice President expressed his outrage to Porter Goss. A few days later,
a call came from Goss's office. The call had been placed by one of Goss's
executive assistants -- emblematic, in that Goss did not make the call himself,
of how dysfunctional relations had become at the top of the CIA. The deputy
expressed the DCI's displeasure. He urged Miscik to reconsider. He described
Goss's position succinctly: "Saying no to the Vice President is the wrong
answer."

Language is an improbably powerful thing. It's just words, after all, in a
world full of noise. But certain combinations of words can move mountains and
change lives. This line did that for Miscik, even after all that she, like
others in embattled corners of the government, had gone through trying to
preserve the basics of analysis and due diligence in the face of a one percent
doctrine that could operate without them, if need be - a doctrine that prized
"response" above all.

"Actually," she replied, "sometimes saying no to the Vice President is what
we get paid for."

She hung up and fired off a memo to Goss, saying -- she later recalled --
that "this was just the sort of thing that had gotten us into trouble, time and
again, over the past few years. Telling only half the story, the part that makes
us look good, and keeping the rest classified. Eventually, it comes out and it
looks bad, real bad, and we lose moral capital."

A few days later, Miscik got word, again from a Goss deputy, that the DCI
would reluctantly support her decision. A few weeks after that, she was gone.
"It was only a matter of time at that point," she recalled.

Her memo -- a summation of a long-standing school of thought of which she
is one of countless adherents -- is, of course, classified. That means, by
accepted definitions of such things that its release would compromise the
security of the nation. Indeed.