Meanwhile, Back in Cairo

Mubarak says he's not leaving and the White House is apparently surprised by this, or at least Leon Panetta is:

From Tahrir Square in Cairo to the halls of the CIA, Hosni Mubarak's decision to hold on to the presidency of Egypt caught observers by surprise and created deep uncertainty about how that country's transition of power will proceed. CIA Director Leon Panetta was so confident Mubarak was leaving that he told House intelligence committee Chairman Mike Rogers at a hearing early Thursday that there was "a strong likelihood that Mubarak will step down this evening, which will be significant in terms of where the hopefully orderly transition in Egypt will take place."

It's not a good thing when the head spook doesn't know what's going on. Why he doesn't know is the interesting question. Michael Ledeen has a theory:

We have been reminded yet one more time that our “intelligence” experts are operating on the basis of some amazingly politically correct and demonstrably false stereotypes that have very little to do with the often ghastly realities of the real world. Those stereotypes include the (false) conviction that Sunnis and Shi’ites can’t work together, that the root problem of the Middle East is Israeli intransigence, that even the most fanatical Muslims (i.e. the Iranian tyrants) are amenable to reason and “really” want to make a deal with us, and that Mubarak can be overthrown by the news media and demonstrators, especially young ones. The Panetta statement is a form of wish-fulfillment, not serious intelligence. Serious intelligence officers were obliged to tell him, and he was obliged to tell Congress, that we did not know what Mubarak was going to say.

The men and women who are responsible for this latest intelligence failure come from the same bureaux and agencies that fed us the ridiculous National Intelligence Estimate that claimed Iran had stopped its quest for atomic bombs, after all. The latest nonsense is of a piece with the earlier stuff.

But telling the truth about our knowledge of Mubarak’s intentions would have revealed that we lack important sources at the highest level of the Egyptian regime. I hope we’re better connected to the Egyptian Army leaders.

I do, too. I believe that the CIA has been failing for a very long time now. We don't seem to know things we used to know. I suspect the reason is that the spooks tend to be insular and are bureaucrats first and operatives second. They are highly skilled in the art of the damaging leak, but not so good at ferreting out what's really happening.

Ledeen goes further than I would in identifying Obama's world view as a factor in the failure of our intelligence operations -- go back to the link if you want more -- but I agree with his conclusion:

Meanwhile, as I have been saying ever since 9/11, we need a thorough purge of the Intelligence Community. We need fewer analysts, tougher minded officials prepared to deliver accurate news even if their superiors don’t want to hear it, and a system that permits our top officials to identify talented underlings, instead of pushing forward intelligence-by-committee that has proven to be wrong so often.

We don't control the events in Egypt, but we should be able to have enough knowledge about what's happening to not be blindsided. This is a problem that spans presidents of both parties and decades now. Change is needed.