FEARING its boundless power and authority will be seriously eroded, the Central Intelligence Agency is mounting a not-so-covert operation - in the media against the Bush White House - for its very survival.

It is "an insurgency", in the words of a Wall Street Journal editorial, that the CIA is unlikely to win.

However, failure is not a result the beleaguered agency is unfamiliar with, given its inability to stop the September 11 attacks -- even though it knew a number of the terrorist hijackers were in the US -- and its infamous assertion that finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq would be a "slam dunk".

With Congress debating the recommendations of the 9/11 commission, which will certainly see the CIA's powers curtailed and the agency re-made, the world's most notorious spy organisation has become "dysfunctional" and a "rogue agency", influential Republican senator John McCain said yesterday.

Senator McCain echoed the anger within the White House over the CIA "old guard" trying to get John Kerry elected by leaking unflattering stories about the Bush administration during the final month of the presidential campaign.

With former Florida Republican and Bush political ally Porter Goss as new head of the CIA, the career spies have mounted a rear-guard action, which consists of leaking stories about the lowest morale at the agency since the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, and the danger of experienced operatives being forced out to settle political scores.

"The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former CIA official. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the President's agenda."

Jim Pavitt, a 31-year CIA veteran, said last month that he had not seen this level of "viciousness and vindictiveness" between and a government and the CIA.

Mr Goss, however, seems unmoved, labelling the agency's directorate of operations -- the most powerful and secretive group within the CIA -- as dysfunctional.

Last week the No 2 man at the CIA, John McLaughlin, resigned, reportedly after clashing with the new leadership. Head of espionage Stephen Kappes is rumoured to also be on his way out as Mr Goss, a former CIA officer and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, clears the decks.

"This kind of shake-up is absolutely necessary," said Senator McCain, who further noted the US now knows little more about Iran and North Korea than it did 10 years ago.

"(Goss) is being savaged by these people that want the status quo, and the status quo is not satisfactory."

Meanwhile one of the CIA's harshest Bush critics, Mike Scheuer, a 22-year veteran who has written two books that were critical of the US's handling of the war on terror, has resigned.

Scheuer's latest book Imperial Hubris goes against key White House assertions. He believes Osama bin Laden is not on the run, the invasion of Iraq has not made the US safer, and that Islamists are in a campaign of insurgency, not terrorism, against the US because of US policies, not out of hatred for Americans.

Astonishingly, Scheuer, while a CIA employee, was given full clearance to promote his book.

"As long as the book was being used to bash the President, they (CIA executives) gave me carte blanche to talk to the media," he said.

Appearing on 60 Minutes yesterday, Scheuer -- who once headed the CIA unit responsible for bin Laden -- called the Saudi-born terrorist "a great man in the sense that he's influenced the course of history".

He also said bin Laden had secured a fatwah from a Saudi sheik authorising the use of nuclear weapons against the US.

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