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Senator Pat Roberts being interviewed by Jim Angle said that the number of employees at CIA dropped from 100,000 to 75,000 during the Goss tenure.

Goss Resignation is a frightening sign Porter Goss was brought into the CIA to try to reform the organization. Mr. Goss was expected to bring about badly needed changes in the U.S. spy organization that is increasingly at the center of so many controversies. However, Goss never had a chance. Rarely reported by the very biased media, much of the CIA and the U.S. Justice Department was "cleared out" during the Clinton Administration. Many of the key legal organizations responsible for America's security and stability were then staffed by Hillary Clinton handpicked staffers. Some of them hired from the outside,...

CIA boss in surprise resignation Porter Goss's resignation surprised friends and pundits alike US President George Bush has unexpectedly announced that the head of the CIA, Porter Goss, is stepping down.No reason was given for the move. Mr Goss has served in the role for less than two years, since being chosen by Mr Bush to replace George Tenet. He was given the job of reforming the agency after a series of intelligence failures, particularly in relation to the 11 September attacks. Mr Bush said Mr Goss had "a tough job and he led ably". Mr Goss said: "I...

WASHINGTON - CIA Director Porter Goss has resigned, a senior administration official said. President Bush, who has been making staff changes at the White House to reinvigoriate his second term, was making another personnel announcement Friday. Bush's new chief of staff, Joshua Bolten, has made several changes since taking over last month. Recently, longtime Bush adviser and confidant Karl Rove had the policy-making portion of his portfolio taken away so he could focus on the midterm elections and White House press secretary Scott McClellan announced his resignation. McClellan has been replaced by Fox News commentator Tony Snow. McClellan's last briefing...

Press conference at 1:45

Moves Signal Tighter Secrecy Within C.I.A. By SCOTT SHANE and MARK MAZZETTI WASHINGTON, April 23 — The crackdown on leaks at the Central Intelligence Agency that led to the dismissal of a veteran intelligence officer last week included a highly unusual polygraph examination for the agency's independent watchdog, C.I.A. Inspector General John L. Helgerson, intelligence officials with knowledge of the investigation said on Sunday. The special polygraphs, which have been given to dozens of employees since January, are part of a broader effort by C.I.A. Director Porter J. Goss to re-emphasize a culture of secrecy. As the inspector general, Mr....

The CIA's top counterterrorism officer was relieved of his position yesterday after months of turmoil atop the agency's clandestine service, according to three knowledgeable officials. Robert Grenier, who spent most of his career undercover overseas, took charge of the Counterterrorism Center about a year ago after a series of senior jobs at the center of the Bush administration's national security agenda. When al Qaeda struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, Grenier was station chief in Islamabad, Pakistan. Among the agency's most experienced officers in southwest Asia, Grenier helped plan the covert campaign that preceded...

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...

ABC News, via their investigative reporter Brian Ross -- and I can attest personally that Brian Ross gets it wrong -- has got a story, "Is the CIA Leak Probe a 'Witch Hunt.'?" Now, because it's Brian Ross, I cannot attest to the accuracy of the report. This is a guy who just recently on Nightline did this whole distortion of Justice Scalia showing up to teach a course for a legal society, at which the respondents and the participants had paid months in advance to attend this thing. It was portrayed by ABC News as a "junket," and because...

WASHINGTON – U.S. intelligence officials told Congress on Thursday that the disclosure of once-classified projects like President Bush's no-warrant eavesdropping program has undermined their work. "The damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission," CIA Director Porter Goss told the Senate Intelligence Committee, citing disclosures about a variety of CIA programs that he suggested may have been compromised. Mr. Goss said a federal grand jury should be empaneled to determine "who is leaking this information."

SAN FRANCISCO – The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California on Wednesday filed a request for information about alleged government spying during student-led protests at two universities. The Freedom of Information Act request was filed with the government on behalf of UC Santa Cruz Students Against the War and Berkeley Stop the War Coalition at the University of California, Berkeley, according to Dorothy Ehrlich, executive director of the ACLU-Northern California.

“Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts.” Thus ran the headline of a front-page news story whose repercussions have roiled American politics ever since its publication last December 16 in the New York Times. The article, signed by James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, was adapted from Risen’s then-forthcoming book, State of War.1 In it, the Times reported that shortly after September 11, 2001, President Bush had “authorized the National Security Agency [NSA] to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States . . . without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying.” Not since Richard Nixon’s misuse...

WASHINGTON - 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 be empaneled to determine "who is leaking this information." His testimony came after National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, who directs all intelligence activities, strongly defended the program, calling it crucial for protecting the nation against its most menacing threat. "This was not about domestic surveillance," Negroponte said. Leaders...

Widespread curiosity over the recent visits to Turkey by senior officials of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Israeli Chief of Staff and the Secretary-General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is continuing with further visits planned by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Peter Pace. Rumors began to circulate about what exactly was being discussed behind closed doors. According to sources requesting anonymity, news reports suggesting that Ankara is a useful tool for any possible war with Iran and Syria, because...

CIA director Porter Goss is redoubling efforts to prevent agents from divulging the spy agency's secrets to the media, and also plans to clamp down on former spies publishing books about their covert careers, Time magazine has reported. Citing an anonymous former senior Central Intelligence Agency official, Time, in a report to hit newsstands this week, said on its website that CIA officials told employees during a meeting last week that leaking had gotten out of control and needed to stop. The reported added that a new clampdown on leakers had been launched, supported by a team of "mostly retired"...

Sunday, January 01, 2006 An Attack on Iran? Yesterday the online edition of The Jerusalem Post, Israel's English language daily newspaper, lead with the headline US planning strike against Iran. The story, which actually quotes the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel, claims that NATO, rather than the United States alone, are examining prospects for such a strike. It goes on to say: According to the report, CIA Director Porter Goss, in his last visit to Turkey on December 12, requested Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to provide military bases to the United States in 2006 from where they would be able...

The media version of the CIA leak case is that the White House illegally revealed a CIA employee's identity because her husband, Joseph Wilson, was an administration critic. But former prosecutor Joseph E. diGenova says the real story is that the CIA "launched a covert operation" against the president when it sent Wilson on the mission to Africa to investigate the Iraq-uranium link. DiGenova, a former Independent Counsel who prosecuted several high-profile cases and has extensive experience on Capitol Hill, including as counsel to several Senate committees, is optimistic that Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will figure it all out. DiGenova...

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...