That evil genius.
Posted on 05/05/2006 11:54:47 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
If Goss is leaving to emerge as a candidate for the Sen., then I have one word: "Strategery".
Well, the timing is probably right to take on a Senate run and don't forget, Rove is "back on track" as the "dealer" for the upcoming campaign.
That evil genius.
no way. you don't send the President out there for a "pat on the back", "he's a good man" photo op, if you expect some hooker scandal to implicate Goss in a few weeks.
that's the only possible positive spin I have seen on this.
I don't know....it's all over the news.
well of course it is, its the "six degrees of Porter Goss".
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Personally, I'd like to recommend Robert Redford as a replacement. |
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Tied to contractor's poker parties -
hints of bribes & women
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Kyle (Dusty) Foggo, the No. 3 official at the CIA, could soon be indicted in a widening FBI investigation of the parties thrown by defense contractor Brent Wilkes, named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the bribery conviction of former Rep. Randall (Duke) Cunningham, law enforcement sources said. A CIA spokeswoman said Foggo went to the lavish weekly hospitality-suite parties at the Watergate and Westin Grand hotels but "just for poker." Intelligence and law enforcement sources said solid evidence had yet to emerge that Goss also went to the parties, but Goss and Foggo share a fondness for poker and expensive cigars, and the FBI investigation was continuing. Larry Johnson, a former CIA operative and a Bush administration critic, said Goss "had a relationship with Dusty and with Brent Wilkes that's now coming under greater scrutiny." Johnson vouched for the integrity of Foggo and Goss but said, "Dusty was a big poker player, and it's my understanding that Porter Goss was also there \[at Wilkes' parties\] for poker. It's going to be guilt by association." "It's all about the Duke Cunningham scandal," a senior law enforcement official told the Daily News in reference to Goss' resignation. Duke, a California Republican, was sentenced to more than eight years in prison after pleading guilty in November to taking $2.4 million in homes, yachts and other bribes in exchange for steering government contracts. Goss' inability to handle the allegations swirling around Foggo prompted John Negroponte, the director of National Intelligence, who oversees all of the nation's spy agencies, to press for the CIA chief's ouster, the senior official said. The official said Goss is not an FBI target but "there is an impending indictment" of Foggo for steering defense contracts to his poker buddies. One subject of the FBI investigation is a $3 million CIA contract that went to Wilkes to supply bottled water and other goods to CIA operatives in Iraq and Afghanistan, sources said. In a hastily arranged Oval Office announcement that stunned official Washington, neither President Bush nor Goss offered a substantive reason for why the head of the spy agency was leaving after only a year on the job. "He has led ably" in an era of CIA transition, Bush said with Goss seated at his side. "He has a five-year plan to increase the analysts and operatives." Goss said the trust Bush placed in him "is something I could never have imagined." "I believe the agency is on a very even keel, sailing well," he said. The official Bush administration spin that emerged later was that Goss lost out in a turf battle with Negroponte, but Goss' tenure was marked by the resignations of several veteran operatives who viewed him as an amateur out of his depth. White House officials said Bush would announce early next week his choice to succeed Goss. Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, Negroponte's top deputy, heads the list of potential replacements, with White House counterterror chief Fran Townsend also on the short list. Negroponte "apparently had no confidence" in Goss, and Bush's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board was also "very alarmed by problems at the CIA," said a congressional source involved in oversight of U.S. spy agencies. "Supposedly the \[Cunningham\] scandal was the last straw," the source said. "This administration may be on the verge of a major scandal."
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Originally published on May 6, 2006
Porter Goss ends his stormy tenure as CIA director
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When it was his time to talk, Goss thanked Bush for the assignment.
"I honestly believe that we have improved dramatically your goals for our nation's intelligence capabilities, which are, in fact, the things that I think are keeping us very safe."
Goss said he thought "the agency is on a very even keel, sailing well."
Neither Bush nor Goss offered a reason for his departure.
Critics say Goss got off on the wrong foot when he took the job in September 2004 and brought in congressional aides as managers. They said the move politicized the agency.
"They came in and they started breaking the china," said James Bamford, author of Body of Secrets, Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency. He said many veteran employees never warmed up to the new staff.
Rep. Jane Harman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said employees with 300 years' worth of experience had left since Goss took the job.
Loch Johnson, professor of political science at the University of Georgia and author of America's Secret Power: The CIA in a Democratic Society, said Goss was no George Tenet, his predecessor.
While Tenet raised morale at CIA headquarters by walking the hallways and slapping people on the back, Goss stayed in his office and delegated.
Johnson also noted that Goss lost power when Bush appointed John Negroponte as national intelligence director.
Johnson said Goss had been angling for the newly created position. When he was passed over, the CIA became just another member of the nation's vast spy network, Johnson said.
Goss also had some public missteps. In March 2005, he talked of being overwhelmed by the job.
"The jobs I'm being asked to do, the five hats that I wear, are too much for this mortal," Goss said. "I'm a little amazed at the workload."
Goss has pressed for aggressive inquiries about leaked information.
"The damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission," he told Congress in February, adding that a federal grand jury should be empaneled to determine "who is leaking this information."
Two weeks ago, Goss announced the firing of a top intelligence analyst in connection with a Pulitzer Prize-winning story about a network of CIA prisons in Eastern Europe. Such dismissals are highly unusual.
Observers of the agency credit Goss, a former CIA officer, with adding to the agency's spy ranks, especially in the Arab world and Asia.
In an interview with the St. Petersburg Times shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, Goss - then-chairman of the House Intelligence Committee - complained about the lack of spies in places such as Afghanistan. He said it was difficult to crack because terrorist cells in that part of the world can be as small as a couple of people.
Johnson, the political professor, was asked to grade Goss' performance.
"I'm afraid he'd have to get a C at best," he said. "I hate to say that, because I like Porter."
Not all of it was Goss' doing.
When he took the job, the agency was reeling from two of the nation's most notable intelligence failures: the inability to foil the 9/11 plot and wrong information on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Former Sen. Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee during 9/11, is a longtime friend of Goss.
In an interview, Graham said that Goss took over when the CIA was in "serious trouble," and that he tried to understand it and clean it up.
"I think he did a very good job and deserves commendation," Graham said.
Graham said he knew the people Goss brought to the agency and found them to be professional, smart, tenacious, and not arrogant.
He said he spoke with Goss regularly. From their conversations, Graham said he walked away thinking "he worked hard, loved the job, had thrown himself completely in a very difficult task."
Rep. C.W. Bill Young, R-Indian Shores, said he and Goss had worked closely, as colleagues in Congress and after Goss was named CIA director. The two usually met weekly, behind closed doors, sometimes with staff, sometimes alone.
"Frankly I'm not surprised he chose to leave," said Young, chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. "He had one of the most difficult jobs in the world. He got his arms around it - and it took him some time."
Young said Goss was criticized by those who criticize everything.
Sen. Bill Nelson, the Florida Democrat who serves on the Armed Services Committee, said: "He's a friend of mine and I'm surprised by his departure.
"If this is an indication of more turmoil within the intelligence community, then it is a real disappointment, especially considering the intelligence failures we experienced leading up to 9/11 and the Iraq war."
A successor to Goss could come as early as Monday.
Among possible candidates are Bush's homeland security adviser, Frances Fragos Townsend; David Shedd, chief of staff to Negroponte; and Mary Margaret Graham, Negroponte's deputy for intelligence collection.
Goss grew up in a world of privilege in Connecticut, attending the best schools and vacationing on Sanibel Island in southwest Florida. He studied classical languages at Yale and graduated with honors in 1960.
Goss worked the clandestine side of the agency in the 1960s and spent time in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Mexico.
A multimillionaire, Goss got into local politics and served as Sanibel Island's mayor and as a City Council member. During the 1970s, he developed a statewide reputation as an environmentalist, catching the eye of then-Gov. Graham.
In 1982, three of five Lee County commissioners were indicted in an airport scandal. Graham tapped Goss to fill one of the posts. Six years later, when Connie Mack ran for the U.S. Senate, Goss was elected to his House seat.
Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.[Last modified May 6, 2006, 06:54:29]
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WASHINGTON - Porter J. Goss was brought into the CIA to quell what the White House viewed as a partisan insurgency against the administration and to re-energize a spy service that failed to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks or accurately assess Iraq's weapons capability.
But as he walked out the glass doors of the CIA's Langley, Va., headquarters Friday, Goss left behind an agency that current and former intelligence officials say is weaker operationally, with a work force demoralized by an exodus of senior officers and by uncertainty over its role in fighting terrorism and other intelligence priorities, said current and former intelligence officials.
In public, Goss once acknowledged being "amazed at the workload." Within headquarters, "he never bonded with the work force," said John O. Brennan, a former senior CIA official and director of the National Counterterrorism Center until last July.
Brennan added: "Porter's a dedicated public servant. He was ill-suited for the job."
As a result of all these factors, said these sources and outside experts who work with the CIA, the number of case officers has skyrocketed, but there has been no dramatic improvements in how spies collect intelligence about terrorist targets.
As important, Goss allowed the atrophy of relations with foreign intelligence services that helped the CIA kill or catch nearly all the terrorists taken off the streets since the Sept. 11 attacks, in the view of these officials and several foreign intelligence officials.
Foreign intelligence heads, who used to spend hours with Goss's predecessor, George Tenet, discussing strategy and tactics, are now more likely to meet with the director of national intelligence, John Negroponte.
One senior European counterterrorism official, asked recently for his assessment of Goss's leadership, responded by saying, "Who?"
Goss was hand-picked by the White House to purge what some in the administration viewed as a cabal of wily spies working to oppose administration policy in Iraq.
His counterinsurgency campaign was so crudely executed by his top lieutenants that they drove out senior and midlevel civil servants who were unwilling to accept the accusation that their actions were politically motivated, some intelligence officers and outside experts said.
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WASHINGTON—CIA chief Porter Goss abruptly and unexpectedly resigned his post yesterday, apparently pushed out by intelligence czar John Negroponte after less than two years leading an agency dogged by morale problems.
Senior administration officials told reporters following videotaped statements by Goss and George W. Bush that Negroponte, who was given the nation's top intelligence post by the U.S. president, had recently raised the prospect of the departure of the former Florida congressman.
The ascension of Negroponte had reduced the stature of Goss's post, but he was also reportedly unable to lift the agency from the ongoing scandal of faulty and exaggerated intelligence that Bush used in his push to war in Iraq.
Goss had vowed to break the mould at the Central Intelligence Agency when he took over, but instead was faced with a spate of resignations by long-time agents when he brought many of his own loyalists into the job.
Last month's firing of Mary McCarthy, accused of leaking information about clandestine CIA prisons to Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporter Dana Priest, only further poisoned the atmosphere at the agency.
Goss had vowed to end leaking at the agency and McCarthy was among a number of analysts and officials forced to undergo polygraph tests.
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Goss had no shortage of critics.
"His chief mission was to reform the operations of the CIA and to lead the agency with foresight and vision, yet his tenure was marked by an exodus of talented and respected intelligence officers and a demoralized staff," said Jay Rockefeller, a Democratic senator from West Virginia.
Jane Harman, the senior Democrat on the House of Representatives intelligence committee, said last week she had never been so concerned about the security of the country.
"We still don't have a handle on Al Qaeda," she said. "Our intelligence reorganization is in a slow start-up, and the CIA is in free fall."
John Pike, a security analyst at globalsecurity.org, said the CIA culture could not deal with the influx of political Goss aides.
"Morale is never good at any large organization. That is a given," Pike said.
"But it had never recovered from the WMD thing and the White House blaming them for that, and then along comes the White House chosen one to clean out the stable."
Goss and the agency also lost a lot of its clout with the installation of Negroponte as the director of national intelligence.
He oversees 16 intelligence agencies, and he, not Goss, delivers the daily intelligence briefings to the U.S. president.
Goss was chosen in 2004 to replace George Tenet, who had infamously told the administration that the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq would be a "a slam dunk."
But while Goss pledged to improve the CIA's human intelligence, Osama bin Laden is still at large, the investigation of the leaking of the name of agent Valerie Plame was an earthquake at the agency and it had been rocked by allegations of its role in both the clandestine prisons and the so-called extraordinary renditions of terrorism suspects, using airports in other countries.
When Bush appointed Goss, 67, himself a former CIA agent, he lauded him as a "reformer."
But it has become a peripheral agency, said Steven Aftergood, a senior analyst with the Federation of American Scientists and a close observer of the agency.
"The CIA is an agency in decline and it has declined further under Goss's tenure," he said.
It's just getting real interesting....the DemonicRats are upset cause they had such a good thing going.....the hint of Poker Parties....etc....was a feeble attempt to tar him ....Negropointe....said ...time to go....
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Related: CIA boss Porter Goss resigns
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| Analysis of CIA chief's resignation |
| www.chinaview.cn 2006-05-06 15:32:33 |
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Related: CIA boss Porter Goss resigns WASHINGTON, May 5 (Xinhua) -- Less than two years since he took over as director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Porter Goss abruptly resigned from the position on Friday, taking many people by surprise. Announcing Goss's resignation at the White House, U.S. President George W. Bush said Goss offered his resignation Friday morning and he had accepted it. Bush described Goss's tenure at the CIA as "one of transitions," during which he said Goss had led the agency "ably." Both Bush and Goss, however, offered no reason for the resignation. Goss, 67, became CIA director in September 2004, two months after the Sept. 11 commission released its final report on the terrorist attacks, in which the commission criticized the U.S. intelligence community, including the CIA, for intelligence failures and missteps that had allowed the attacks to happen. Terrorists hijacked four passenger planes on Sept. 11, 2001, and crashed them onto the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, killing nearly 3,000 people. "He knows the CIA inside and out. He's the right man to lead this important agency at this critical moment in our nation's history," Bush said in August 2004, when he nominated Goss, a former Republican Congressman from Florida who headed the House Intelligence Committee and was once a CIA officer. He served as the CIA director at a time when the agency was under fire for both its intelligence failures on terrorism and on prewar intelligence on Iraq. When Bush passed over Goss to nominate in early 2005 then U.S. Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte as the first director of National Intelligence, a post the Sept. 11 commission recommended to create in its report to take control of the country's 15 spy agencies, however, things began to change. Under the intelligence reform act approved by the Congress in December 2004, Negroponte would become the president's chief intelligence adviser, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence would take over from the CIA to write the president's daily briefs, reducing the CIA's power and its chief's prestige. In addition, Goss's time with the CIA was marked by a strained relationship with the agency's clandestine operation department, and the departure of many long-time agency officials, including CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin. It was also no secret in Washington that Goss and Negroponte had engaged in turf battles. A CNN report said Negroponte decided recently to transfer certain functions from the CIA to his office, but the decision was fiercely resisted by Goss. And after the White House sided with Negroponte and his deputy, Michael Hayden, it was a mutual decision that Goss would resign, the report quoted sources as saying. In a statement, Goss said it was his desire "to lead the CIA, this is where I started my career, and where I always wanted to return." But some Democrats hailed his departure. Democratic Senator John Rockefeller said in a statement that Goss's chief mission at the CIA was to reform its operations and to lead the agency with foresight and vision, "yet his tenure was marked by an exodus of talented and respected intelligence officers and a demoralized staff." Representative David Obey termed Goss's management style as one that had been "wrecking the country's most important intelligence agency." At a time when Bush's approval ratings plunged and the president was shaking up its team to reinvigorate his second term, it would only be a natural choice for Goss to resign, analysts said. Enditem |
| Editor: Mo Hong'e |
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CIA chief Goss quiet on abrupt departure
Sat May 6, 2006 11:11am ET11
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By Jeremy Pelofsky
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Porter Goss said on Saturday the reason for his abrupt resignation as CIA chief after less than two years on the job would remain a mystery, while the White House denied that President George W. Bush had lost confidence in him.
As Goss left his home Saturday on his way to give a commencement address in Ohio, he declined to comment on his resignation from the Central Intelligence Agency, telling CNN that "it's one of those mysteries."
Goss had come under fire inside and outside the agency during a difficult tenure, and several career intelligence officers had left after clashes.
The White House denied a report in the Washington Post that cited senior administration officials as saying that Bush had lost confidence in Goss and had decided to replace him months ago.
"Reports that the president had lost confidence in Porter Goss are categorically untrue," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said aboard Air Force One as Bush traveled to Oklahoma State University to deliver a commencement address.
"Porter Goss played a key role in keeping the focus on winning the war on terror and helped transform the agency to meet the challenging times we're living in and the times ahead."
Administration officials told CNN on Friday that Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, principal deputy director of national intelligence, would replace Goss. Sources also told The New York Times and Time magazine Web sites that Hayden was a leading candidate for the post.
Perino declined to comment on a replacement but said an announcement would be made soon.
The CIA lost clout when it fell under a newly created director of national intelligence as part of reforms in response to intelligence failures over the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
An administration official said on Friday that tensions between Goss and national intelligence director John Negroponte arose as the new intelligence arm sought to assert itself over the CIA and met opposition from the agency.
Mounting tensions came to a boil when Negroponte decided that many counterterrorism analysts from the CIA should be moved to the relatively new National Counterterrorism Center that was created as part of intelligence reforms.
Goss objected because he believed that would erode the CIA's capability, an intelligence official said. "He was standing up for the agency."
Perino said Goss had made "significant steps" to help integrate the CIA into the new structure under Negroponte.
"Then there was a collective agreement that now would be a time we could have a new CIA director come in to take the ball and move the agency forward from here," she said.
(Additional reporting by Caren Bohan in Stillwater, Oklahoma.)
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