FBI vs. CIA... FBI for the win?

J. Edgar Hoover became jealous of the CIA's growing power. Institutionally, the organizations were also very different with the CIA holding a more politically diverse albeit Machiavellian group in contrast to the more bureaucratically hide-bound and conservative FBI. This was reflected in Hoover's description of the OPC as "Wisner's gang of weirdos". Hoover subsequently began carrying out investigations into their past. It did not take him long to discover that some of them had been active in left-wing politics in the 1930s. This information was passed to Joseph McCarthy who started making attacks on members of the OPC. Hoover also gave McCarthy details of an affair that Frank Wisner had with Princess Caradja in Romania during the war. Hoover claimed that Caradja was a Soviet agent.^[13]
Joseph McCarthy also began accusing other senior members of the CIA as being security risks. McCarthy claimed that the CIA was a "sinkhole of communists", and claimed he intended to root out a hundred of them. One of his first targets was Cord Meyer, who was still working for Operation Mockingbird. In August 1953, Richard Helms, Wisner's deputy at the OPC, told Meyer that Joseph McCarthy had accused him of being a communist. The Federal Bureau of Investigation added credibility to the accusation by announcing it was unwilling to give Meyer "security clearance". However, the FBI refused to explain what evidence they had against Meyer. Allen W. Dulles and Frank Wisner both came to his defense and refused to permit an FBI interrogation of Meyer.^[14]
Joseph McCarthy did not realize what he was taking on. Contrary to statutory and legal limitations, once the network in authority in the CIA saw its interests threatened, Wisner was directed to unleash Mockingbird on McCarthy. Drew Pearson, Joe Alsop, Jack Anderson, Walter Lippmann and Ed Murrow all engaged in intensely negative coverage of McCarthy, whose political reputation was permanently damaged by the press coverage orchestrated by Wisner.  (Operation Mockinbird)

If Petraeus is any measure, seems like the FBI is winning these days.  But if history is any measure, then Obama or Hillary may not realize what they took on?  "Joseph McCarthy did not realize what he was taking on...." 

Indeed.