Posted on 08/10/2004 4:54:44 PM PDT by Former Military Chick
If Porter Goss becomes the next CIA director (a big if, by the way), two predictions can be made with confidence. First, to the extent possible, he will return the agency's clandestine branch to its adventurous, gun-toting days of yore. Second, he will be ruthlessly loyal to George W. Bush.
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Goss, who has been the Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence for the past eight years, was himself a CIA spy from 1962-71, stationed in Miami during the Cuban missile crisis, then in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Western Europe.
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Goss also came to Bush's aid a few months earlier, during the Joseph Wilson-Valerie Plame scandal. One would think that a former CIA spy might be appalled by reports that a White House official had publicly exposed the identity of an undercover agent, especially as an act of political retaliation against the agent's spouse. The blatant politicization of intelligence is, or should be, anathema to any professional spy—or prospective CIA director.
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Finally, there is the question of independence. Most official panels on reforming intelligence emphasize the need to separate analysis from policy—professional objectivity from politics. At least since June, Goss has been campaigning to be the next CIA director, and in that time he has served energetically as a shill for Bush's re-election. His record might make him a good candidate for director of operations, but his behavior makes him a bad one for director of the CIA.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.msn.com ...
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