Free Republic

...Duncan Hunter, ...the House Armed Services Chairman, is refusing to join the Beltway stampede to pass, in a few short weeks, the most extensive changes in U.S. intelligence in 50 years. ...The Senate and House each passed bills in the heat (and panic) of the election campaign.... Mr. Hunter specifically objects to a provision that would take budget authority away from the Secretary of Defense over the intelligence agencies under his control. This is a narrow but important issue. It would potentially undercut the military's ability to obtain and act on intelligence in real time.... There are other problems with...

Juxtapose two images in your mind's eye. First, the dirty-faced young Marine, taking a cigarette break between skirmishes in Fallujah last week. Second, a CIA bureaucrat, taking tiny sips of chardonnay in those delicate intervals when he takes time out from writing his resignation to whine to the Washington Post. There is no way to reconcile those images. And there is no excuse for what CIA girlie men are doing. Porter Goss, new Director of Central Intelligence and most recently chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, brought a few of his top Hill staffers with him to Langley. Some of...

Juxtapose two images in your mind's eye. First, the dirty-faced young Marine, taking a cigarette break between skirmishes in Fallujah last week. Second, a CIA bureaucrat, taking tiny sips of chardonnay in those delicate intervals when he takes time out from writing his resignation to whine to the Washington Post. There is no way to reconcile those images. And there is no excuse for what CIA girlie men are doing.

The nation's new spy chief's management style is alienating some career intelligence officers, and the tensions threaten to impede rebuilding the nation's spying capabilities, current and former intelligence officials say. Two months after taking over the Central Intelligence Agency, Porter Goss, a former Republican congressman, is perceived as a distant figure who has given wide latitude in running the agency to several aides he brought from Capitol Hill. These aides, led by Goss chief of staff Patrick Murray, have clashed with senior and mid-level managers whose support has long been considered vital for a director to gain control of the...

WASHINGTON -- Intelligence agencies came under sharp attack yesterday from lawmakers, as did Congress, where a bill to put in place recommendations from the Sept. 11 commission has stalled heading into this week's postelection session. [snip]Disarray in the government's intelligence operations is most evident at the CIA less than two months after a new director, former Representative Porter Goss, was sworn in. Goss, a Florida Republican, was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. ''The agency seems in free fall in Washington, and that is a very, very bad omen in the middle of a war," Harman said on the CBS...

Tension over CIA chief reaches 'dangerous point' By Douglas Jehl New York Times News Service WASHINGTON — Deep, unresolved tensions between new leaders and senior career officers at the Central Intelligence Agency threaten to set off a rebellion within the agency's clandestine service, according to current and former intelligence officials. Porter Goss The tensions pit the new intelligence chief, Porter J. Goss, against the CIA's directorate of operations, the most powerful and secretive part of the agency. Winning allegiance from the career spies within the clandestine service is widely regarded as essential to the success of any intelligence chief. For...

Spies rise up against CIA chief By Marcus Warren in New York (Filed: 15/11/2004) The CIA was in turmoil last night as supporters and critics of its new director fought a bitter and very public war of words over his efforts to overhaul America's main intelligence service. The brash management style of Porter Goss, a controversial appointment when President George W Bush picked him for the job this summer, was under unprecedented scrutiny amid reports of spies' morale sinking to its lowest point in 25 years. Many senior CIA insiders abandoned the cloak-and-dagger tactics of their craft to launch a...

WASHINGTON - Within the past month, four former deputy directors of operations have tried to offer CIA Director Porter J. Goss advice about changing the clandestine service without setting off a rebellion, but Goss has declined to speak to any of them, said former CIA officials aware of the communications.

Senator McCain has decided to make CIA reform his visible issue in the coming year. Rather than settling for just saying he thinks the CIA needs to be fixed, he called them a rogue agency. Perhaps Valerie Plame could be described as a rouge agent moonlighting as a political smear merchant, but McCain has hyperbolized to keep his name in the headlines. The occasion for this ruckus involved the Washington Polemic's efforts to smear Porter Goss. George W. Bush's new director of the CIA. It seems Goss intends to change how the CIA operates and the CIA doesn't feel like...

Within the past month, four former deputy directors of operations have tried to offer CIA Director Porter J. Goss advice about changing the clandestine service without setting off a rebellion, but Goss has declined to speak to any of them, said former CIA officials aware of the communications. The four senior officials represent nearly two decades of experience leading the Directorate of Operations under both Republican and Democratic presidents. The officials were dismayed by the reaction and were concerned that Goss has isolated himself from the agency's senior staff, said former clandestine service officers aware of the offers.

CIA plans to purge its agency Sources say White House has ordered new chief to eliminate officers who were disloyal to Bush BY KNUT ROYCE WASHINGTON BUREAU November 14, 2004 WASHINGTON -- The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources. "The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 - Deep, unresolved tensions between new leaders and senior career officers at the Central Intelligence Agency threaten to set off a rebellion within the agency's clandestine service, according to current and former intelligence officials. The tensions pit the new intelligence chief, Porter J. Goss, against the C.I.A.'s directorate of operations, the most powerful and secretive part of the agency. Winning allegiance from the career spies within the clandestine service is widely regarded as essential to the success of any intelligence chief. For now, former intelligence officials say, many career C.I.A. officers do not know whether to regard...

The C.I.A. Versus Bush By DAVID BROOKS Now that he's been returned to office, President Bush is going to have to differentiate between his opponents and his enemies. His opponents are found in the Democratic Party. His enemies are in certain offices of the Central Intelligence Agency. Over the past several months, as much of official Washington looked on wide-eyed and agog, many in the C.I.A. bureaucracy have waged an unabashed effort to undermine the current administration. At the height of the campaign, C.I.A. officials, who are supposed to serve the president and stay out of politics and policy, served...

Now that he's been returned to office, President Bush is going to have to differentiate between his opponents and his enemies. His opponents are found in the Democratic Party. His enemies are in certain offices of the Central Intelligence Agency. Over the past several months, as much of official Washington looked on wide-eyed and agog, many in the C.I.A. bureaucracy have waged an unabashed effort to undermine the current administration. At the height of the campaign, C.I.A. officials, who are supposed to serve the president and stay out of politics and policy, served up leak after leak to discredit the...

Deputy Chief Resigns From CIA Agency Is Said to Be in Turmoil Under New Director Goss. The deputy director of the CIA resigned yesterday after a series of confrontations over the past week between senior operations officials and CIA Director Porter J. Goss's new chief of staff that have left the agency in turmoil, according to several current and former CIA officials. John E. McLaughlin, a 32-year CIA veteran who was acting director for two months this summer until Goss took over, resigned after warning Goss that his top aide, former Capitol Hill staff member Patrick Murray, was treating senior...

Since new CIA Director Porter Goss blocked the October Surprise agency left-wingers had prepared against Bush (discussed in “Porter At The Pass” last week), they desperately rigged another one, working with Mohammad ElBaradei at the UN. What nobody is focusing on in Al Qaqaagate is that the CIA is behind it. The anti-Bush lefties are now known as the “Rogue Weasels” at Langley, and they are frantic to do whatever they can to elect Kerry. They cooked up this entire phony “tons of missing explosives” scandal, sweet-talked the head of the UN’s nuclear inspection agency, ElBaradei, to carry their water...

Porter Goss' initial moves as CIA director appear to herald a post-election purge at the already troubled spy agency, according to current and former top U.S. intelligence officials. Goss, a former Republican congressman, has put at least four former Capitol Hill Republican staffers into top positions in his CIA office and has given them broad authority to make personnel and restructuring decisions, the current and former intelligence officials said. One of the aides, whose identity Knight Ridder is not disclosing because he served under cover, has been "going around telling people they are to fire 80 to 90 people" in...

Fri Sep 24, 9:41 AM ET President Bush (news - web sites) watches as his Chief of Staff Andrew Card, right, swears in Porter Goss, center, to head the Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites), Friday, Sept. 24, 2004, in the Oval Office of the White House. Goss' wife Mariel stands at his side. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)

The Senate has confirmed Porter Goss as CIA Director.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 - Representative Porter J. Goss of Florida said on Tuesday that rebuilding the Central Intelligence Agency would take more than five years and that American spies needed to be encouraged to take more risks. Before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mr. Goss, nominated by President Bush to be the director of central intelligence, offered what he called a candid view of the intelligence agencies. He said that if confirmed as director, he would practice "tough love" in leading agencies that he portrayed as standing at 3 on a scale of 10 in terms of capabilities. Mr. Goss's bleak...