SpyTalk

"It's a done deal," said a recent retiree who spoke anonymously because of agency security rules.

A CIA spokesman called that "wrong."

The Intelligence Identities Protection Act prohibits further identifying the official, who was Baghdad station chief during 2005.

"He was probably the single most notorious COS [chief of station] Baghdad, the guy who was in charge there when boozing and womanizing was really out of control," he added.

"What message do you think that is going to send to the troops?"

Another former CIA employee in Baghdad alleged that the station chief "got in trouble over there and sent home early for harassing the ladies. There are a lot of talented people in that building, and to put [him] in that position is nuts."

The official in question could not be located for comment.

Several former employees of the spy agency in Baghdad have told me they suffered in silence as the station chief and his male aides engaged in heavy drinking and unbounded, extramarital sex in public places. 

The complaints of those who dared to complain went unheeded, they said. Some quit upon their return stateside. 

But a former CIA executive at the time said senior officials in the Operations Directorate resisted holding subordinates, such as station chiefs, accountable. 

"You might be temporarily sidelined by an infraction, but then you were usually 'rehabbed' in fairly short order," he maintained. "This created a very loyal 2nd-tier management structure."

News of the putative appointment comes at the end of a bad week for the CIA.

It's station chief in Algiers, identified in news reports as Andrew Warren, was recalled late last year after at least two women filed complaints that he had spiked their drinks with knock-out drugs and had sex with them.  According to news reports, Warren is being investigated for a similar complaint in Egypt during his time there.  

Embittered former agency employees have noted that it was the U.S. ambassador, not the CIA, who ordered Warren home from Algiers.