As we reported last night, DHS intelligence chiefs were expected to take some heat Wednesday morning at a House Homeland Security subcommittee hearing, chaired by Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.).

But the hearing had hardly opened before the full committee chairman, Bennie Thompson (D-Miss), big-footed into the proceedings to blast the DHS undersecretary for intelligence and analysis Caryn Wagner, in office only three months.

“Unfortunately, your I&A has still never established a specific and effective strategic plan that both describes and delivers results, measures those results, and helps course correct if or when those results are insufficient,” Thompson said, reading from a prepared statement.

Philip Mudd, a veteran CIA and FBI terrorism analyst, was supposed to be the Department of Homeland Security’s intelligence chief. Instead, he recently left government service, joined the New America Foundation, and wrote a piece about al-Qaeda for Newsweek.

Mudd was a longtime CIA counterterrorism specialist before coming to the FBI, but it doesn’t appear as if he’ll return to his home agency. This could be it for Mudd’s government career.

And that would be a strange turn. After spending years as an analyst away from the spotlight, President Obama and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano nominated Mudd to head the intelligence branch at the Department of Homeland Security, taking over from another storied CIA veteran, Charlie Allen. But Mudd withdrew his name from consideration, reportedly after Senate staffers thought he might have been involved in interrogation or detention decisions of the previous administration — an allegation that has never been substantiated. White House spokesman Nick Shapiro said at the time that Mudd would have made “an excellent Undersecretary for Intelligence and Analysis.”

Meanwhile, FBI Director Robert Mueller announced just now that Sean Joyce, a longtime FBI special agent, will head up the bureau’s National Security Branch, overseeing all intelligence and national security functions. Joyce would have been Mudd’s new boss if Mudd stuck around.

I’m awaiting formal comment from FBI and CIA on Mudd and will update when I have more.

Update: From CIA spokesman George Little: “Phil had a distinguished career at the Agency, where he made outstanding contributions to many aspects of our vital intelligence mission. His consummate professionalism and leadership made a stand-out of a stand-up guy.”

Over the Memorial Day recess, Mudd met with senior staff members of the Homeland Security panel whose interest was primarily how he would handle issues of intelligence sharing with state and local police units. When, near the end of a two-hour session, they went over Mudd’s CIA positions from 2001 to 2005, it became apparent that questions about harsh interrogations, renditions and allegations that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had links to al-Qaeda would have to be explored, according to a person at the session who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to discuss the matter.

“Since he was deputy director of the counterterrorism center, he was going to be asked whether interrogation produced useful intelligence, and if it didn’t, why didn’t he stop it?” the source said.

Yeah! Why didn’t some completely anonymous CIA official march into Dick Cheney’s office and force the vice president of the United States and all his acolytes to completely abandon their cherished torture program — something they feel so strongly about that they continue to defend it out of office? And why didn’t he do that while Porter Goss was firing CIA officials for insufficient loyalty to the Bush administration? Clearly Phil Mudd was the problem here.