Free Republic

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...

The fifth of the labors of Hercules was to clean out, in a single day, the stables of King Augeas, who owned thousands of cattle, horses and sheep. I imagine there are days in which CIA Director J. Porter Goss thinks his task is comparable.

The only good thing about taking over an organization that's hit rock bottom is that the only direction to go is up. This thought may have crossed CIA Director Porter Goss' mind as he looked back over his first year in office at Langley this past weekend. The plucky Goss is fervently trying to reinvigorate the embattled CIA, stung by monumental intelligence failures in recent years. But in contrast to the public bellyaching of some disgruntled agency employees (complaints shamelessly played out in the press), Goss is making progress. Goss, the former House Intelligence Committee chairman, is in the midst...

The only good thing about taking over an organization that's hit rock bottom is that the only direction to go is up. This thought may have crossed CIA Director Porter Goss' mind as he looked back over his first year in office at Langley this past weekend. The plucky Goss is fervently trying to reinvigorate the embattled CIA, stung by monumental intelligence failures in recent years. But in contrast to the public bellyaching of some disgruntled agency employees (complaints shamelessly played out in the press), Goss is making progress. Goss, the former House Intelligence Committee chairman, is in the midst...

WASHINGTON, Sept. 22 - A year after taking charge of the Central Intelligence Agency, Porter J. Goss is still struggling to rebuild morale and assert leadership within an institution shaken by recent failures and buffeted by change, current and former intelligence officials and members of Congress say. On Thursday, two days before his one-year anniversary on the job, Mr. Goss met with agency employees and told them that his vision for further changes would involve "breaking some molds" to reassert the C.I.A.'s role as "a global agency." "We are developing new and creative ways to get more and more of...

Porter J. Goss, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, delivered a long-awaited internal report to Congress on Monday night that is said to give a harsh assessment of the agency's performance before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Mr. Goss, who was chairman of the House Intelligence Committee before his appointment last year as head of the C.I.A., hand-delivered two copies of the classified report to staff members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees. The copies of the report, which is several hundred pages, were placed in committee safes and were not to be opened at least until...

Hold on to your hat. The plot is about to thicken. Behind the scenes, the single most important reason for the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson farce is that CIA Director Porter Goss has finally started to clean house at Langley. Goss's long-overdue shake-up is clearly backed by the White House, the top levels of the Pentagon and State Department, and the new National Director of Intelligence, John Negroponte. Judging by Director Goss's remarks at his Senate confirmation hearings, those whose jobs are most in danger include the CIA "experts" in WMD proliferation – Valerie Plame's outfit – who completely failed to...