Thanks. Would you ping me, please? I'd be interested in Gertz's take on Goss.
Found this concerning article by Gertz concerning Goss in doing some googling:
"Legislation to create serious competitive analysis by outside critics was watered down in the authorization bill at the urging of CIA and with the help of Rep. Porter Goss, the House Intelligence Committee chairman. Mr. Goss, R-Fla., is a former CIA officer and has earned a reputation for running interference for the CIA rather than conducting aggressive oversight."
See "Inside the Ring" article at: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=18175
Hello, I bolded the section concerning Goss. I've heard Gertz talk in not overly flattering terms of Goss on the radio, I believe the M. Savage show.
“Performance-based oversight ended when Senator David Durenburger, Minnesota Republican, became the Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, and performance-based oversight never returned during subsequent chairmanships. “The oversight business became an oversight lapdog,” [congressional intelligence veteran Angelo] Codevilla said. Recent chairman in both the House and the Senate have been dominated by members of Congress who either are unable to grasp the complexities of intelligence oversight and how to conduct oversight, or by members intent only on protecting the CIA. In many ways, congressional oversight degenerated into a mutual admiration society for secret agencies. Instead of checking on the performance of agencies and how they spend upwards of $30 billion to $35 billion of taxpayer money, the committees of Congress charged with oversight have become cheerleaders for poorly managed, badly structured, and improperly funded intelligence agencies.
Such is the case with Representative Porter Goss, Florida Republican and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee at the time of the September 11 attacks. Goss was notorious among congressional aides for stripping out any tough legislation from the annual intelligence authorization bills that would have required the CIA to become more effective. He played a major role in making sure oversight did nothing to improve the CIA. A former CIA officer, Goss saw it as his personal mission to protect the agency from its critics. The result was that the CIA was able to manipulate the House oversight panel and neutralize any serious effort to improve its performance.
Goss helped to “cover up” for the CIA’s lack of performance, Codevilla told me. “Not for any [politically] partisan purpose, but quite simply because of agency partisanship, a confusion of patriotism with agency loyalty.” For Goss and those like him, any criticism of the CIA is out of bounds. Partly as a result of the Church and Pike committees, too many supporters of the CIA and U.S. intelligence agencies in general confuse performance-based criticism with anti-intelligence criticism. (114-115)
Gertz, Bill. Breakdown - How America’s Intelligence Failures Led to September 11. Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2002.