I was surprised when George Tenet, director of the CIA, bailed out after he’d skated through his recent 9/11 Commission grilling. And the surprise “retirement” of his DDO Pavitt a day later had interesting timing, to say the least. (For those keeping score, that leaves John McLaughlin as Tenet’s likely replacement. He’s a career CIA bureaucrat, who’s never been in the field, and is not exactly regarded as the reincarnation of Allan Dulles.)

The folks at From The Wilderness make an interesting argument that this is a slow-speed, bloodless attempt at a coup d’etat by the CIA, possibly as revenge for the current administration blowing Valerie Plame’s cover and/or the failed attempt to make the CIA look bad by blaming the yellowcake fiasco on bad intelligence. They further argue that Colin Powell is also in on the coup, and will resign before the November elections.

There’s a pretty good argument that this belongs to the tinfoil hat brigade, but I wonder.