Meteor,
There is more to this story. You stopped your quote one graf too soon.
The infighting, backstabbing and maneuvering on such major foreign-policy issues as North Korea, Syria, Iran and postwar Iraq have escalated to a level that veterans of government say they have not seen in years. At one point, the senior official said, Bush himself asked how bad it was.
"This isn't as bad as [George] Shultz vs. [Caspar] Weinberger, is it?" he asked, referring to a legendary Reagan administration rivalry between secretaries of state and defense. One top official reportedly nodded and said it was "way worse."
(Side note: Inky is using Knight Ridder as their Washington Bureau.)
The real story is in the last graf: conflict leaking is the new thing for this administration, and points to a phenomenon we should pay attention to. When Bush came in, I immediately suspected that his "administration" would implode because he is incapable of exercising the kind of leadership it takes to hold the fractious needs of powerful executive branch agencies together. I just never dreamed it would happen so fast.
Bush makes a mistake in his question: this isn't Reagan's White House, it is Richard Nixon's and it is going to come apart the same way. And if you think George Tenet isn't fully aware of the role the DCI played in Watergate, you would be wrong.