Free Republic

Bill Gross, founder and co-chief investment officer of Pimco, the world’s largest mutual fund, made news last month when he dumped all U.S. Treasurys from the $1 trillion fund he operates. I spoke with him by phone yesterday afternoon. He had a solemn warning: The United States has a year or two to change course or face a debt crisis akin to what Greece, Portugal and Ireland have experienced. He describes bond traders as “vigilant but not vigilantees,” meaning they are cautious and on the outlook for signs that inflation (“the enemy of bonds”) will rear its head. He explained...

Three former CIA directors have privately told their successor he had his facts wrong when he revealed an illegal assassination program, reports Joseph Finder, and his spies will suffer for it. according to a half-dozen sources, including several very senior, recently retired CIA officials, clandestine-service officers, and Cabinet-level officials from the Bush administration, the real story is at once more innocent—Panetta was mistaken; no law was broken—and far more troubling: an inexperienced CIA director, unfamiliar with how his vast, complicated agency works, unable to trust senior officials within his own agency, and desperate to keep his hands clean, screwed up....

Believe it, champ. And welcome to the club. He doesn’t name any names but there’s no question who he’s aiming at.

Since leaving my post as CIA director almost three years ago, I have remained largely silent on the public stage. I am speaking out now because I feel our government has crossed the red line between properly protecting our national security and trying to gain partisan political advantage. We can't have a secret intelligence service if we keep giving away all the secrets. Americans have to decide now.

Porter Goss, former CIA Director and past chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, blasted the Obama administration for releasing Justice Department memos on harsh interrogation techniques. “For the first time in my experience we’ve crossed the red line of properly protecting our national security in order to gain partisan political advantage,” Goss said in an interview.

Investment Outlook Bill Gross | April 2007 Grim Reality Download PDF E-Mail Alerts Download Audio Subscribe to Podcast Podcast Instructions Problems Downloading? Life, it seems, has become one giant reality show – or is it vice versa? Which is truth and which is the illusion or have both simply morphed into a uni-consciousness that feeds off information from different computers – one the living kind with two arms and two legs, the other more stationary with a plasma and keyboard. My Apple screensaver for instance features a stunning series of pictures of our galaxy and beyond, from detailed midnight...

A veteran CIA operations official who clashed with former agency Director Porter J. Goss was formally named the deputy CIA director yesterday, raising concerns among critics who say he will hamper reform at the agency. Stephen R. Kappes, who is well-liked among CIA rank and file but who is viewed as someone supporting the status quo at the embattled agency, began work yesterday in his new role, a CIA statement said.

Stephen Kappes: The Wrong Man at CIA by Kenneth R. TimmermanPosted May 31, 2006Before Gen. Michael Hayden settles in as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Congress needs to ask hard questions of the man he has said he wants to appoint as deputy director of the CIA: former operations chief Stephen R. Kappes. Kappes is a former Marine who elicits strong praise from former operations officers such as Gary Berntsen, who worked under him for two years. Hayden also heaped praise on Kappes. "When I did the Rolodex check around the community about Steve … they’re almost universally positive,"...

May 24, 2006 - As controversial CIA Director Porter Goss exits the agency, NEWSWEEK has discovered new details about a purge of top agency operatives shortly after Goss's arrival in 2004. A bitter secret feud over a Clinton-era counterintelligence case was apparently a major motivation behind the loss of those seasoned intelligence veterans, sources say. Gen. Michael Hayden, President Bush's nominee to replace Goss as CIA chief, has signaled that when he is confirmed by the Senate, probably later this week, he intends to appoint one of the principal victims of the feud, former CIA operations chief Stephen Kappes, as...

PORTER GOSS'S TENURE as director of central intelligence began with a public spat between the new reform-minded CIA leadership and an intransigent bureaucracy. Now, 18 months later, it is ending in a cloud of confusion. Goss is gone and so are his agents of change. Two of the CIA officials at the heart of that opening battle--Mary Margaret Graham and Stephen Kappes--have been promoted. And the old guard is happy. "The move was seen as a direct repudiation of Goss's leadership and as an olive branch to CIA veterans disaffected by his 18-month tenure," wrote Peter Baker and Charles Babington...

As a professional intelligence officer, the last people you want to report to are generals and diplomats. And if General Hayden comes to the CIA, we’ll have Mr. Negroponte [a career diplomat] as head of the community, and a general as the head of the CIA. They are not particularly good at taking bad news to the president, in the experience of most intelligence officers. So General Hayden is not the right choice. I also think that it kind of beggars the imagination in the sense that every one of the commissions that investigated 9/11 or Iraq said that we...

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, a 64-year-old ex-high school wrestling coach, ordinarily is not a shouter. But according to Capitol Hill sources, he engaged in a high decibel rant last week when he met with Vice President Dick Cheney. The speaker was enraged by the sacking of his friend and former colleague, Porter Goss. Hastert was so vituperative that a private session with President George W. Bush in the living quarters of the White House was scheduled immediately (although Hastert aides said the meeting had been planned previously). The speaker toned down his volume on the hallowed...

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert, a 64-year-old ex-high school wrestling coach, ordinarily is not a shouter. But according to Capitol Hill sources, he engaged in a high-decibel rant last week when he met with Vice President Dick Cheney. The speaker was enraged by the sacking of his friend and former colleague, Porter Goss. Hastert was so vituperative that a private session with President Bush in the living quarters of the White House was scheduled immediately (although Hastert aides said the meeting had been planned previously). The speaker toned down his volume on the hallowed ground and did more listening than...

The age of reform ends after 18 months. PORTER GOSS'S TENURE as director of central intelligence began with a public spat between the new reform-minded CIA leadership and an intransigent bureaucracy. Now, 18 months later, it is ending in a cloud of confusion. Goss is gone and so are his agents of change. Two of the CIA officials at the heart of that opening battle--Mary Margaret Graham and Stephen Kappes--have been promoted. And the old guard is happy."The move was seen as a direct repudiation of Goss's leadership and as an olive branch to CIA veterans disaffected by his 18-month...

In one of the boldest new missions, the Pentagon has sharply increased the number of clandestine teams of Defense Intelligence Agency personnel and Special Operations forces conducting secret counterterrorism missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and other foreign countries. Using a broad definition of its current authority to conduct "traditional military activities" and "prepare the battlefield," the Pentagon has dispatched teams to gather information about potential foes well before any shooting starts. In an effort to enhance military interrogations, Mr. Cambone is also overseeing the politically sensitive task of rewriting the Army's field manual. Just last week, he and other top Pentagon...

......... Regrettably, reform at the CIA is now dead. The only real chance opened immediately after 9/11 and closed when President Bush decided to retain the services of George Tenet, who always remained close and sympathetic to the operations directorate. Ms. Harman, many other prominent Democrats, and the anti-Bush press have put another nail into the clandestine service's coffin by rallying around an organization that desperately needs to be radically deconstructed. However tepidly or lazily Mr. Goss approached his work, he and his abrasive minions ought to be complimented for at least firing somebody. Given the history of the CIA,...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Steve Kappes, a recently retired CIA insider, has been offered the No. 2 slot at the spy agency, sources told CNN, to reassure the CIA operations community about Gen. Michael Hayden's appointment as director as well as ease concerns about that nominee's military ties. The decision to tap Kappes is also seen as a move aimed at members of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee who have raised doubts about Hayden. Kappes was a civilian operations officer who reportedly was forced out of the CIA by Porter Goss' associates after Goss became director in 2004. Intelligence analysts and...

Valerie Plame should be the next Director of Central Intelligence, not Gen. Mike Hayden. Now that the CIA's Praetorian Guard has -- with the connivance of National Intelligence Director John Negroponte -- rid itself of Porter Goss, the CIA is confidently preparing to march back into the intelligence dark ages that preceded 9/11. Gen. Hayden -- former head of the National Intelligence Agency and most famous for his strong defense of the NSA terrorist surveillance program -- is slated to be nominated for the DCI post today. Hayden, now Negroponte's deputy and choice for DCI, will face tough questioning in...

Monday, May 08, 2006 Kyle Dustin "Dusty" Foggo is the subject of an FBI investigation related to poker parties and possible use of prostitutes to curry favor with defense and CIA contracting officials. Investigators are probing whether San Diego-based defense contractor Brent Wilkes provided prostitutes to lawmakers or Foggo in order to win federal contracts. The CIA sent out an e-mail to agency staff Monday afternoon announcing that Foggo was stepping down, but it did not say whether he was leaving the agency, U.S. officials said. Suggestions have been made that he will retire soon.

The reasons for Porter Goss’s abrupt departure as CIA director are shrouded in mystery. But its effect is not. It gives the impression that there has been a coup by the CIA insiders who have waged a covert policy war against the Bush administration for five years. The White House must act quickly to correct the impression that the renegades have won. The CIA is supposed to work for the president. It was created in 1948 to be the president’s civilian, non-partisan, non-policy intelligence arm. Its job is to provide an accurate picture of facts and trends so that decision...

Hayden considered pride of (Pittsburgh) North Side By David M. Brown TRIBUNE-REVIEW Sunday, May 7, 2006 Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the highest-ranking intelligence officer in the U.S. armed forces who could be President Bush's choice to head the Central Intelligence Agency, is a highly intelligent and hard-working man who learned valuable lessons growing up in Pittsburgh, according to former teachers and a classmate.

ALL the ingredients for a spy thriller involving prostitutes, poker, a congressman called Randy and parties at the legendary Watergate complex may lie behind the sudden resignation of Porter Goss as director of the CIA last Friday. The saga has already been named “Hookergate” and the CIA is buzzing with rumours that there is more to Goss’s departure than meets the eye. The timing is certainly curious, coming hard on the heels of the CIA’s confirmation last week that Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, the number three in the nation’s spy centre who was hand-picked by Goss, had attended poker games at...

A year after a presidential commission gave a scathing assessment of intelligence on Iran, they say, American spy agencies remain severely handicapped in their efforts to assess its weapons programs and its leaders' intentions. Whoever takes the helm of the C.I.A., after the resignation on Friday of Porter J. Goss, will confront a crucial target with few, if any, American spies on the ground, sketchy communications intercepts and ambiguous satellite images, the experts say. "Whenever the C.I.A. says 5 to 10 years, that means they don't know," said Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former Iran specialist in the clandestine service of...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House on Saturday denied that President Bush had lost confidence in just-resigned CIA Director Porter Goss, saying there was a "collective agreement" the agency needed a new leader now. Bush planned to act quickly, perhaps as early as Monday, to nominate Goss' successor. The leading candidate was Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, the top deputy to National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, a senior administration official said. Goss played an important role in the fight against terrorism and "helped transform the agency to meet the challenging times we're living in," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told...

CNN just broke on Anderson Cooper 360 that former NSA Chief General Hayden will replace Goss as the head of the CIA. It hasn't been announced yet by the president though.

CIA Director Porter Goss abruptly resigned yesterday amid allegations that he and a top aide may have attended Watergate poker parties where bribes and prostitutes were provided to a corrupt congressman.

Some Thoughts on Porter Goss Much has been made, in the Mainstream Media , and out in the hinterlands of the Internet , of the fact Porter Goss did some long-overdue”housecleaning” at the CIA. “Oh-oh-oh !” , the critics moan. “ He got rid of key employees with decades of experience in intelligence gathering – with the aid of a deputy he chose personally, and that we know next-to-nothing about !” It does not seem to have occurred to the critics that those who were swept out may have been those whose intransigence helped keep the CIA from discovering the...

Another sign that Congress's intelligence reform is a mess. Like most spy matters, Porter Goss's surprise resignation yesterday as CIA Director is hard to read. The White House insists he wasn't forced out, and at 67 years old the former head of the House Intelligence Committee has always said he didn't plan on a long tenure. - snip - The most distressing news would be if Mr. Goss is a victim of those parts of the permanent intelligence bureaucracy that resisted his tenure from the start. Nasty press leaks helped to knee-cap one of the aides Mr. Goss brought with...

Goss quits as CIA chief By Joseph Curl and Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published May 6, 2006 CIA Director Porter J. Goss resigned abruptly yesterday, leaving a post he held for less than two years and becoming the latest high-level administration official to be ensnared in a White House shake-up.     Mr. Goss, widely unpopular among senior officials in the intelligence community and blamed for repeated leaks in recent months, called President Bush yesterday morning to offer his resignation. "I've accepted it," the president said.     Yesterday's announcement was hastily arranged, with the two men speaking briefly to reporters in the...

President George W. Bush stunned Washington on Friday by accepting the resignation of CIA Director Porter J. Goss, and Republican sources told TIME that the White House plans to name his replacement on Monday: Air Force General Michael V. Hayden, who as Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence has been a visible and aggressive defender of the administration's controversial eavesdropping program. His nomination is sure to reignite the battle over the program on Capitol Hill, where one House Democrat promises "a partisan food fight" during the confirmation process. Though Hayden, who has a close rapport with Vice President Cheney, has...

Porter J. Goss was forced to step down yesterday as CIA director, ending a turbulent 18-month tenure marked by an exodus of some of the agency's top talent and growing White House dissatisfaction with his leadership during a time of war. Seated next to President Bush in the Oval Office, Goss, a Republican congressman from Florida before he took over the CIA, said he was "stepping aside" but gave no reason for the departure. Bush, who did not name a successor, said he had accepted the resignation and thanked Goss for his service. "Porter's tenure at the CIA was one...

Today President Bush visted a local hardware store in the Capiol Hill area (Frager's Hardware) , after shopping for Barney, he spoke the employees of Frager's Hardwars about the economy and the importance of the small business community. Later today the President accepted the resignation of CIA director, Porter Goss. An announcement of his replacement is expected to be made on Monday

CIA boss in surprise resignation Porter Goss's resignation surprised friends and pundits alike US President George Bush has unexpectedly announced that the head of the CIA, Porter Goss, is stepping down.No reason was given for the move. Mr Goss has served in the role for less than two years, since being chosen by Mr Bush to replace George Tenet. He was given the job of reforming the agency after a series of intelligence failures, particularly in relation to the 11 September attacks. Mr Bush said Mr Goss had "a tough job and he led ably". Mr Goss said: "I...

Goss Resignation is a frightening sign Porter Goss was brought into the CIA to try to reform the organization. Mr. Goss was expected to bring about badly needed changes in the U.S. spy organization that is increasingly at the center of so many controversies. However, Goss never had a chance. Rarely reported by the very biased media, much of the CIA and the U.S. Justice Department was "cleared out" during the Clinton Administration. Many of the key legal organizations responsible for America's security and stability were then staffed by Hillary Clinton handpicked staffers. Some of them hired from the outside,...

WASHINGTON - CIA Director Porter Goss has resigned, a senior administration official said. President Bush, who has been making staff changes at the White House to reinvigoriate his second term, was making another personnel announcement Friday. Bush's new chief of staff, Joshua Bolten, has made several changes since taking over last month. Recently, longtime Bush adviser and confidant Karl Rove had the policy-making portion of his portfolio taken away so he could focus on the midterm elections and White House press secretary Scott McClellan announced his resignation. McClellan has been replaced by Fox News commentator Tony Snow. McClellan's last briefing...

Press conference at 1:45

See this thread first. The CIA's own Porter Goss is cleaning the house--no great loss He canned Bob Grenier! Is that a veneer? The leakers and libs he should toss!

Jane Harmon: NY Times Should be Prosecuted In a stunning break with her party, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee said Sunday that the New York Times should be prosecuted for damaging national security by revealing the National Security Agency's top secret terrorist surveillance program authorized by President Bush. "If the press was part of the process of delivering classified information, there have to be some limits on press immunity," Harmon told NBC's "Meet the Press." Moderator Tim Russert then pressed: "But if [the NSA leak] came from a whistleblower, should the New York Times reporter be prosecuted?"...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 11 — Federal agents have interviewed officials at several of the country's law enforcement and national security agencies in a rapidly expanding criminal investigation into the circumstances surrounding a New York Times article published in December that disclosed the existence of a highly classified domestic eavesdropping program, according to government officials. The investigation, which appears to cover the case from 2004, when the newspaper began reporting the story, is being closely coordinated with criminal prosecutors at the Justice Department, the officials said. People who have been interviewed and others in the government who have been briefed on the...

AT the Central Intelligence Agency, we are more than holding our own in the global war on terrorism, but we are at risk of losing a key battle: the battle to protect our classified information. Judge Laurence Silberman, a chairman of President Bush's commission on weapons of mass destruction, said he was "stunned" by the damage done to our critical intelligence assets by leaked information. The commission reported last March that in monetary terms, unauthorized disclosures have cost America hundreds of millions of dollars; in security terms, of course, the cost has been much higher. Part of the problem is...

Director Launches Investigation Into Who Gave Sensitive Information To The Media. Feb 7, 2006 — The director of the CIA has launched a major internal probe into media leaks about covert operations. In an agencywide e-mail, Porter Goss blamed "a very small number of people" for leaks about secret CIA operations that, in his words, "do damage to the credibility of the agency." According to people familiar with the Goss e-mail, sent in late January and classified secret, the CIA director warned that any CIA officer deemed suspect by the agency's Office of Security and its Counter Intelligence Center (which...

February 03, 2006 Goss Says NY Times "Spying" Story Harms Intelligence But, it is a hard story to find. None of the major sources carry it in an easy to find place. Not a top story at Google or Yahoo news. I had to do some searching for it. CIA Director Porter Goss said Thursday that the disclosure of President Bush's eavesdropping-without-warrants program and other once-secret projects had undermined U.S. intelligence-gathering abilities. "The damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission," Goss told the Senate Intelligence Committee. He said a federal grand jury should...

Parsing Pelosi January 6th, 2006 On June 10, 1998, Rep. Porter Goss (R-FL), then Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and now CIA Director, held a public hearing on the issue of whistleblowers in the intelligence community (IC).  The concern of those in the Congress was that information, especially classified information, that the intelligence committees of both the House and Senate should be receiving or be aware of, was, in fact, being prevented from reaching them. This was, at least in part, because of the fears of those within the IC that by providing such information, either...

WASHINGTON - CIA Director Porter Goss, saying his agency struggles to penetrate terrorist sanctuaries overseas, insists that "we know more than we're able to say publicly" about Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. In a rare television interview, Goss defended the CIA's track record, which has been tarnished by allegations ranging from erroneous or hyped intelligence leading to the war in Iraq to reports the agency runs secret prisons abroad for terrorism suspects and uses harsh interrogation techniques amounting to torture. "What we do does not come close to torture," Goss said, though he declined to elaborate on the...

CIA DIRECTOR Porter J. Goss insists that his agency is innocent of torturing the prisoners it is holding in secret detention centers around the world. "This agency does not torture," he said in an interview this week with USA Today. "We use lawful capabilities to collect vital information, and we do it in a variety of unique and innovative ways, all of which are legal and none of which are torture." Mr. Goss didn't describe any of those "innovative" interrogation techniques, nor has his agency allowed its secret prisons to be visited by the International Red Cross or any other...

When Porter J. Goss took over a failure-stained CIA last year, he promised to reshape the agency beginning with the area he knew best: its famed spy division. Goss, himself a former covert operative who had chaired the House intelligence committee, focused on the officers in the field. He pledged status and resources for case officers, sending hundreds more to far-off assignments, undercover and on the front line of the battle against al Qaeda.[snip]Some of the struggles that have dominated Goss's first year stem from a massive reorganization that stripped the CIA of its leadership role in the intelligence community...

The most dangerous moment in any transition is halfway through, when the old structure is badly weakened but the new one isn't yet strong enough to carry the load. That's where the Bush administration stands in its incomplete effort to restructure the intelligence community. The intelligence reshuffle was the product of two warring impulses that have been apparent in this administration's foreign policy from the start -- a "realist" support for strong, independent spy agencies and a "neoconservative" mistrust, bordering on outright hatred, of the CIA as a supposed obstacle to the president's goals. The intelligence-reform impulse led President Bush,...

CIA's spooks are in turmoil. Fights between top CIA managers and Goss' inner circle are spilling into public view. Veterans are retiring early... Goss...is making waves as he fulfills promises to the White House and Congress that he would make the CIA respond better to terrorism and other modern threats. Goss said the CIA will bring in recruits who have traveled abroad and "more recent arrivals to the United States." Historically, such backgrounds would make it difficult to get a CIA job because of security risks and other concerns. Goss also plans to reduce the bureaucracy at headquarters, send more...

WASHINGTON -- Contrary to recommendations, CIA Director Porter Goss will not order disciplinary reviews for the agency's former director George Tenet and other officials who have come under fire for their performance before the attacks of Sept 11, 2001. In a statement Wednesday, Goss said a report by the agency's independent watchdog did not suggest "that any one person or group of people could have prevented 9/11." "After great consideration of this report and its conclusion, I will not convene an accountability board to judge the performances of any individual CIA officers," he said. Half of those named in the...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - As CIA Director Porter Goss tries to rebuild the agency's global operations, he faces a shortage of experienced spies created by a post-September 11 stampede to the private sector, current and former intelligence officials say. Goss, who a year ago inherited a CIA wracked by criticism of intelligence failures over Iraq and the September 11, 2001, attacks, has come under fire from critics about the publicized departures of several high-level clandestine officers. Reform advocates see the loss of senior officials as a natural consequence of changes intended to root out an old guard blamed for lapses that...