David Kay for CIA Director

David Kay has, after all, demonstrated once again the qualities of intellect, integrity, and independence that are always desirable in leaders of the U.S. intelligence community, but rarely more necessary than right now.

For example, Dr. Kay has made clear that, if there is fault to be found over Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, the blame should lie with those intelligence officials who produced the faulty data, not those policymakers who made decisions on the basis of it. As he told National Public Radio, "It’s an issue of the capabilities of one’s intelligence service to collect valid, truthful information."

In recent congressional testimony, Dr. Kay went even further: "I actually think the intelligence community owes the president [an apology] rather than the president owing [one to] the American people." He went on to warn President Bush’s partisan critics that, "We have to remember that this view of Iraq was held during the Clinton administration and didn’t change in the Bush administration. It is not a political ‘got you’ issue. It is a serious issue of how you could come to the conclusion that is not matched by the [facts]."

President Bush could do himself and the country an enormous favor by recognizing that David Kay is the sort of man who should be fixing what ails America’s intelligence services, notably by ending the practice of trying to get intelligence "on the cheap" without the costly and time-consuming investment in clandestine human assets (also known as spies). More importantly, Dr. Kay could be relied on as director of central intelligence to do what he has been doing ever since he got back from Iraq — speaking truth to power, something we are likely to need more than ever if the war on terror is to be won by freedom-loving people.