Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Porter Goss is Bush's choice to head CIA

President Bush on Tuesday(Aug 10th) nominated Rep. Porter Goss of Florida to head the CIA, saying the former undercover operative "knows the CIA inside and out" and can bolster its spy network.



"He is well prepared for this mission," the president said of Goss, chairman of the House intelligence committee.

"He's the right man to lead and support the agency at this critical moment in our nation's history," Bush said.

Goss, whose nomination must be confirmed by the Senate, had been mentioned prominently in speculation about a successor to departed CIA Director George Tenet, who left amid a torrent of criticism of the agency's handling of prewar intelligence on Iraq.

Bush still has a major decision ahead of him. He has embraced a cornerstone recommendation by the commission investigating the September 11, 2001, terror attacks: creation of a new intelligence czar to oversee the activities of the CIA and more than a dozen other intelligence agencies.

"I think every American knows the importance of getting the best possible intelligence we can get to our decision-makers," Goss, 65, said during the Rose Garden announcement.

If the president names an intelligence czar, his CIA chief would lose some power in the reshuffling and essentially would be required to report to the new head of all intelligence operations.

Neither Bush nor Goss discussed the new organization, and the CIA had no comment Tuesday on Bush's appointment.

Both men stressed that Goss' experience as an undercover CIA officer would help the agency bolster its ability to use spies, instead of just technology, to infiltrate terrorist networks. "The essence of our intelligence capability is people," the Florida Republican said.

Said Bush: "To stop them from killing our citizens, we must have the best intelligence possible."

Tenet's last day was July 11, and the much-criticized agency since then has been under the leadership of acting Director John McLaughlin.

The administration was believed to have debated internally whether to choose a permanent successor to Tenet before the fall elections, thus putting itself in the position of having to defend its choice in confirmation hearings held in a politically charged atmosphere.

Goss would take over the agency at a pivotal moment.

Leaders of various intelligence agencies worry about a series of high-profile events this summer that could become attractive terrorist targets. It is widely believed that al Qaeda and its allies might try to strike the United States in a way that replicates the political and economic impact of March's train bombings in Madrid, Spain.

The Connecticut-born Goss graduated from Yale in 1960 and launched a clandestine career, working for Army intelligence for two years and eventually the CIA's most well-known division, the Directorate of Operations.

When he got into politics, Goss had to get special permission to reveal that he was associated with "the agency" for roughly a decade, reportedly in Europe and Latin America. Goss still doesn't discuss classified details of his work, although he has said he was deployed in Miami during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

"I had some very interesting moments in the Florida Straits," Goss told The Washington Post in 2002.

In the early 1970s, an almost deadly staph infection forced him to retire to Sanibel, Florida, where retired CIA officers who had made the coastal community their home had convinced him to come for recovery. Each day, he tried to walk to the ocean as part of his rehabilitation.

Gradually, he stepped into local politics and ran for the House in 1988.

Goss has served in Congress for 16 years, including eight years as House Intelligence chairman. He planned on making his 2000 election bid his last, but decided to stay on after the September 11 attacks -- with encouragement from Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. The opportunity was sweetened when Republicans waived a rule limiting his chairmanship to six years.

Along with fellow Floridian, Democratic Sen. Bob Graham, then the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Goss led an joint congressional inquiry into the attacks, which identified numerous miscalculations that prevented authorities from derailing the attacks.

With his well-placed experience, Washington insiders have speculated for some time that he could take over as director of central intelligence, overseeing the CIA and 14 other agencies that make up the intelligence community. Only one CIA director was also a member of Congress: former President George H.W. Bush.

The 2005 intelligence authorization bill, which passed the House in late June, contained an entire section dedicated to criticizing the CIA's clandestine service, where Goss once worked.

Tenet at the time called some of the judgments "absurd" and "ill-informed."
....from the The Associated Press.

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1 comment:

Blogger said...

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