page, written by Jon Chait of The New Republic, another important neocon journal.

Still, on the morning of March 10, 2009, Blair described the high value that Freeman will bring to the job  his long experience and inventive mind, for example.

Enter Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, and Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut who simply could not abide someone in that post with open respect for the rights and interests of both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. By five oclock that afternoon, Freeman was told by Blair to announce that he (Freeman) had asked that his selection not proceed.

To his credit, Freeman went down swinging. He made it clear that he was withdrawing his previous acceptance of Blairs invitation to chair the NIC because of the character assassination of him orchestratedas a key reform that followed the twin intelligence failures on 9/11 and Iraqs WMD.

The DNI was given the supremely difficult task of ruling over the intelligence community, a responsibility previous invested in the Director of Central Intelligence. The job was hard enough, but Blair was hampered further because he lacked the strong personal support of President Obama.

I served under nine directors of central intelligence  several of them at close remove. Admiral Stansfield Turner, who was picked by his Naval Academy classmate Jimmy Carter, was the only one who really grasped the reins of the entire intelligence community and made it cohere.

A few years ago, as Adm. Turner and I sat together waiting to go into a TV studio, I had a chance to ask him how