Still, the anecdote about Miscik hating the politicization, and trying to dig in her heels against it, is bound to have serious founding in fact. Obama needs people around who know the spook world. None of them are going to be pure, so I’m willing to settle for one who wasn’t eagerly sycophantic.

Tenet clearly has a great agent, but he was Bush’s willing servant. I like Suskind, but think that he may have been too desperate to find a good guy in an agency that is led by sycophants and worse.

So, to the extent one trusts Suskind (and one has to take into account his casting Tenet as pretty much the hero of the piece), Miscik may have gone along to get along, but she did it with bad grace and good instincts.

Brennan is more worrisome to me.

But, as with all hierarchies, the people who get promoted tend to be the ones who swallow the Kool Aid. So I wouldn’t look for too many decent people at high levels.