Washington Turf Wars

Washington’s bureaucratic turf wars are a dismal reality of politics in Beltwayistan, but are now threatening national policy, as competing agendas threaten policies extending far beyond the continental U.S. In two of the most notable recent examples, the Kazakh “Giffengate” corruption case and attempts to extradite notorious “Lord of War” Viktor Bout to the United States, eager federal officials in both cases are running up against other government elements content to let both cases lie fallow, notably the CIA and Pentagon. The controversies, schizophrenic as they are, shed a bright light into the darker corners of federal realpolitic, pitting the pragmatists against a younger generation of Elliot Nesses. In the end, the eventual casualty is Washington’s relentlessly self-proclaimed image abroad as a… . . . → Full Story: Washington Turf Wars