Posted on 05/06/2006 1:10:27 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post all lead with the forced resignation of CIA Director Porter Goss after only 18 months on the job. President Bush is expected to appoint a replacement next week. The NYT and Post seem pretty certain that the replacement will be Air Force General Michael V. Hayden, who is currently a deputy for John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence.
A former GOP congressman, Goss was CIA director for only a few months before Bush effectively demoted him by making Negroponte his boss. Negroponte, not Goss, now gives the president his daily intelligence briefing, and Goss' resistance to Negroponte's turf encroachment is cited as the ostensible reason for his departure. (The Post notes that Goss and Negroponte were once frat brothers at Yale.)
But the real reason, as revealed in dozens of criticisms and backhanded compliments in both the Post and NYT, is that Goss was a terrible manager. "Goss could not overcome a reputation as a partisan politician who worked congressional hours and appeared disinterested in his overseas intelligence counterparts," writes the Post. Around a dozen senior agency officials either resigned in protest or asked for reassignment under Goss' leadership. The LAT adds that Goss left the running of the agency largely to his former congressional aides. According to the Post, Goss' staff used to ask about the party affiliations of analysts who made negative assessments of the Iraq situation. An anonymous "friend" of Goss tells the NYT, "I think he was in over his head." The ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee has this to say: "Porter made some significant improvements at the C.I.A., but I think even he would say they still have some way to go." Ouch.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
A real sickening love feast ah.
The more likely scenario. Time will tell.
Besides getting the job done, I think Rove wants Goss for something. Rove is in full swing and exactly where he wants to be.
Bull...Senator Pat Roberts was interviewed about Goss and ask a similar question and he said you'd have to know Porter he's just not like that in the least. I'll trust the senator on that one. ;o)
CIA boss Goss parts Company
Editorials
************************************AN EXCERPT **********************************
Abruptly, Porter Goss, the nation's No. 1 spymaster, is gone - under circumstances that are murky, but that, per emerging reports, suggest a lapse of judgment. Per the emerging reports, it appears the CIA chief might have kept company of dubious nature.
The reports are that the FBI is probing whether Goss and agency Executive Director Dusty Foggo played poker with a defense contractor who was named as bribing California Rep. Duke Cunningham in a case aswirl with money and prostitutes. The contractor, a pal of Foggo's, wouldn't be the sort you'd want hosting your top spy.
Perhaps there's nothing to it, or perhaps Goss had no idea with whom he was gambling. If so, call that an intel failure. Which is what he was brought into a disarrayed CIA to fix, and by some accounts he has been not unsuccessful. His boss, John Negroponte, recently assured Time magazine that the agency is in much better shape than it was when Goss came in less than two years ago.
From the start, he had his hands full. His authority was truncated by a reorganization of the U.S. intelligence apparatus; there was no chance he was going to get along with veteran careerists who didn't care for his boat-rocking and who started walking out the door; he got banged dizzy by the Valerie Plame and secret-flights and Mary McCarthy affairs. And we have to suspect he didn't endear himself to his commander in chief when he publicly grumbled that he had to spend five hours a day preparing reports for President Bush.
Accepting the resignation, Bush made a point of noting the five-year reform plan Goss put into place remained on course and that a new CIA chief will hew to it. Why did Goss quit? Or, as the case may be, get pushed off the sled? We're following those emerging reports. What we do know is that at present nobody's in charge at the CIA.
"Dilbert:CIA".
I think you're on to something.
Goss Resigns ~~~It probably has something to do with this (From Time Magazine):
************AN EXCERPT ***********************************************
But now, in a little noticed move, Negroponte is signaling that he is moving still more responsibility from the CIA to his own office, including control over the analysis of terrorist groups and threats.
*************************************AN EXCERPT *************************************
In a speech in San Antonio last week, Negroponte's top deputy, Michael Hayden, declared that an office largely under Negroponte's control the National Counterterrorism Center, or NCTC was now in charge of dictating the role other agencies will play in terror analysis. Hayden said too many agencies were in the analysis business and that the NCTC, like a team captain, " will make these calls for the entire IC [intelligence community]." This may seem like bureaucratic minutiae, but it reflects an important struggle over a key aspect of American intelligence. Even though some diminishment of the CIA was all but guaranteed by the passage of the DNI law 18 months ago, each new detail of the Negroponte's implementation has been watched for how much it may curtail the power of the once-supreme CIA.
This is supposed to be a criticism? It's a badge of honor.
See this was planned long before the announcement on Friday, IMHO.
these are the people Goss was put there to root out - it sounds like he was doing his job.
so why did he stop? and stop so abruptly that they barely had time to put together the exit pat on the back speech on a Friday afternoon? certainly, he couldn't have rooted all of them out in just 18 months?
Michael Brus, a former Slate assistant editor, is a writer and social worker in Seattle.
The search for a more fulfilling job led Michael Brus, a political journalist for Slate, to leave his career for an entry-level position as a counselor in a Seattle emergency shelter. Through a series of diary entries, Brus recounts the day-to-day experiences of working in the social services, from busting clandestine crack-smoking sessions in the men's john to signing people up for mats to listening to a kickboxing, grandiose delusional man recount his days as "muy bien," the Sultan of Saudi Arabia. Though Brus often spends even his mainly sleep-deprived nights dreaming of the shelter, at least his days spent in the luxury hotel-turned shelter, located on the original Skid Row, are never dull.
http://tinyurl.com/h889w
Well, damn,.... and I think the real reason is that Goss had done his job and the CIA was shrinking as designed by the Congress....why stick around.,....
Maybe I should post the Time article .... Excerpted of course .... on its own thread....
Sounds like Negroponte wanted it....
I think this has always been the plan. Besides, nothing in yrs has come out of the CIA but crap. This agency works to undermine a President. Give me a break...it needs to be busted up...big time.
It does...
The same question should be asked every officer in the military.. especially flag officers..
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