Porter Goss
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Porter Johnston Goss (born November 26 1938) is an American politician and a former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. A CIA operative in Latin America during the Cold War, he served as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1989 until he took up his post at the agency. [1]
Goss represented the 14th congressional district of Florida, which includes Lee County, Fort Myers, Naples, and part of Port Charlotte. He served for a time as the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Goss was a co-sponsor of the USA PATRIOT Act and was a co-chair of the Joint 9/11 Intelligence Inquiry.
Goss abruptly resigned as Director of the CIA on May 5 2006 in a sit-down press conference with President George W. Bush from the Oval Office[3] On May 8 2006, Bush nominated USAF Gen. Michael Hayden to be Goss's successor.
Biography and early CIA career
Goss was born in 1938 in Waterbury, Connecticut. He attended Camp Timanous in Raymond, Maine and was educated at Fessenden. In 1956 he graduated from Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut. He was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity alongside William H.T. Bush, the uncle of President George W. Bush, and John Negroponte, who served as an Ambassador for George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, and as Goss's superior in the post of Director of National Intelligence from 2005 to 2006.[4]
He went to Yale University, where he got his Bachelor of Arts majoring in ancient Greek. (Goss also speaks Spanish and French). He is also believed to have been a member of the Book and Snake (1960), a secret society at Yale. Immediately after graduating in 1960, he began serving in both the Army and the CIA in intelligence operations.
In his junior year at Yale, Goss was recruited by the CIA. He spent much of the 1960s—roughly from 1960 until 1971—working for the Directorate of Operations, the clandestine services of the CIA. There he first worked in Latin America and the Caribbean and later in Europe. The details are not known due to the classified nature of the CIA, but Goss has said that he had worked in Haiti, Santo Domingo, and Mexico. A photograph taken in Mexico City in January 1963 allegedly shows Goss with his arm around Felix Rodriguez, at a table with Barry Seal and other CIA members of Operation 40. It is not known if Porter Goss had contact with George H.W. Bush's Zapata Corporation at this time.
Goss, who has said that he has recruited and trained foreign agents, worked in Miami for much of the time. It is speculated that he took part in the recruitment of Cuban exiles and immigrants for the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, which was crushed by Fidel Castro. Goss was also involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, telling the Washington Post in 2002 that he had done some "small-boat handling" and had "some very interesting moments in the Florida Straits."
Towards the end of his career as a CIA operative, Goss was transferred to Europe, where, in 1970, he collapsed in his London hotel room because of a blood infection in his heart and kidneys. Goss says he does not know that happened, but says that he was not poisoned. Some sources now say that Goss suffered a staph infection. In any case, his health was severely affected, and he retired from the CIA.
He is married to Mariel Robinson and they have three sons and one daughter.
Government career
Goss began his political career in 1974, when he was elected to the Sanibel City Council and was elected mayor by the council. In 1983, Bob Graham, then Florida governor, appointed Goss to the Lee County Board of Commissioners.
In 1988 Goss ran for Congress in what was then the 13th Congressional District of Florida, encompassing Lee, Charlotte, and Sarasota counties. The seat was vacated by Connie Mack III when Mack ran successfully for the U. S. Senate. In the primaries Goss's main opponent was Louis A. "Skip" Bafalis, a former holder of that congressional seat, which Bafalis had previously relinquished during an unsuccessful campaign for the Florida governorship. Due to his name recognition, Bafalis was the favorite to win the race, however, he only garnered 29% of the vote in the primary to Goss's 38%, largely due to the fact that Goss's campaign was much better financed. Goss went on to defeat Bafalis handily in the run-off election. In the general election, Goss faced the former first president of Common Cause, Jack T. Conway. Goss had no trouble winning the general election in the heavily Republican district, and did not have any significant opposition in his seven subsequent elections, as he won them all with more than 70 percent of the vote, and in 2002 he ran unuopposed.
He served in Congress for 16 years until his appointment by President George W. Bush to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). While in the House, Goss served as chair of the House Intelligence Committee from 1997 until 2005 and the Vice-Chairman of the House Rules Committee. He also helped establish and served on the Homeland Security Committee. As a congressman, Goss defended the CIA and supported strong budget increases— some of Goss's critics, even in the Republican party, see him as a believer in the idea that "intel problems can be solved by throwing money and personnel at them." However, in mid-2004, Goss's public statements changed sharply, saying that the CIA is on its way to becoming "a complete waste of money."
Goss has a consistently conservative voting record, with the exception of his views towards the environment— Goss supported the Kyoto Protocol and strengthening the Environmental Protection Agency. Most of his major legislation has been intelligence authorization bills, with some local constituent-services bills.
The legislation he sponsored include: a constitutional amendment to establish term limits limiting representatives to no more than three consecutive terms of four years[5]. Major bills sponsored by Goss include a bill to limit Congressional pay raises to no more than Social Security cost-of-living adjustments[6] (unpassed), The Public Interest Declassification Act of 1999[7] (unpassed), and the USA PATRIOT Act.
Career timeline
- CIA Director 22-Sep-2004 to 5-May-2006 (resigned)
- U.S. Congressman, Florida 14th (3-Jan-1993 to 23-Sep-2004, resigned)
- U.S. Congressman, Florida 13th (3-Jan-1989 to 3-Jan-1993)
- Mayor Sanibel, FL (1981-82)
- Mayor Sanibel, FL (1975-77)
- CIA employee 1962-71
- Council on Foreign Relations
- Ripon Society
Intelligence inquiry: Sept. 11, 2001
Goss later went into business with two fellow ex-CIA members, founding the Island Reporter newspaper. Goss also made a fortune in the Florida real estate market. Later, he and his partners sold the newspaper they founded for what he once referred to as an "obscene" price. According to a September 13, 2004 article in Roll Call (a twice weekly newspaper providing an insider perspective on happenings in Congress), Goss had a net worth of $16.1 million, including at least $500,000 in undeveloped real estate on Fishers Island, N.Y.
In August 2001 Goss, Senator Bob Graham (D-Fl.), and Senator Jon Kyl visited Islamabad, Pakistan. Meetings were held with President Pervez Musharraf and with Pakistan's military and intelligence officials including the head of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) General Mahmoud Ahmad, as well as with the Afghan ambassador to Pakistan, Abdul Salam Zaeef. On the morning 11 September, 2001, Goss and Graham were having breakfast with General Ahmad.[2][3] Ahmad's network had ties to Osama bin Laden and directly funded, supported, and trained the Taliban (Human Rights Watch, [8]). They met with Musharraf and Zaeef on the 27th. As reported by Agence France Presse on August 28, 2001, Zaeef assured the US delegation that the Taliban would never allow bin Laden to use Afghanistan to launch attacks on the US or any other country. Goss fully defended the CIA and the Bush administration. With the White House and Sen. Graham, his counterpart in the Senate Intelligence Committee, Goss rebuffed calls for an inquiry in the weeks immediately following September 11.
After growing pressure, Congress established the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001, a joint inquiry of the two intelligence committees, led by Graham and Goss. Goss and Graham made it clear that their goal was not to identify specific wrongdoing: Graham said the inquiry would not play "the blame game about what went wrong from an intelligence perspective,", and Goss said, "This is not a who-shall-we-hang type of investigation. It is about where are the gaps in America's defense and what do we do about it type of investigation."[9]
The Washington Post reported statements made by Goss of May 17, 2002. Goss said he was looking for "solutions, not scapegoats." He called the uproar over the U.S. White House briefing on terror threats of August 6, 2001 "a lot of nonsense." He also said, "None of this is news, but it's all part of the finger-pointing. It's foolishness." The Post also reported that Goss refused to blame an "intelligence failure" for September 11, preferring to praise the agency's "fine work."(Washington Post, May 18, 2002, "A Cloak But No Dagger; An Ex-Spy Says He Seeks Solutions, Not Scapegoats for 9/11")
The inquiry's final report was released in December 2002 and focused entirely on the CIA and FBI's activities, including no information on the White House's activities. Ray McGovern, a 27-year veteran of the CIA and a frequent commentator on intelligence issues, believed the report showed that Goss gave "clear priority to providing political protection for the president" when conducting the inquiry.
After receiving a phone call from the White House in October 2002, Goss publicly declared his opposition to the creation of an independent 9-11 Commission. A year later, he declined to open committee hearings into the Valerie Plame leak, saying: "Somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA, I'll have an investigation."
Goss chiefly blames President Bill Clinton for the recent CIA failures. He confided in a reporter: "The one thing I lose sleep about is thinking what could I have done better, how could I have gotten more attention on this problem sooner." When asked whether he ever brought up his concerns with the administration, Goss claimed he had met three times with President Clinton to discuss "certain problems." The upshot? "He was patient and we had an interesting conversation but it was quite clear he didn’t value the intelligence community to the degree President Bush does."
As MSNBC[10] and CNN[11] reported, in June 2004 Goss's demeanor became markedly more partisan — attacking Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the Democratic presidential nominee, for a 1977 quote arguing for intelligence budget cuts and calling Kerry's proposals on nuclear security "dangerously naive."
Director of CIA
Following the June 3, 2004 resignation of CIA director George Tenet, Goss was nominated to become the new director on August 10 by President George W. Bush. The appointment was challenged by some prominent Democrats, including former Vice President Al Gore, Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV). Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-WV), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, expressed concerns that Goss was too politically partisan, given his public remarks against Democrats while serving as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Another Democratic member of the committee, Ron Wyden (D-OR), expressed concerns that given Goss's history within and ties to the CIA, he would be too disinclined to push for institutional change. In an interview on March 3, 2004 Goss described himself as "not qualified" for a job within the CIA, although he was referring to a position as a case officer. (See below)
The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee endorsed his nomination by a 12-4 vote on September 20, 2004, and on September 22 he was confirmed by the Senate in a 77-17 vote. Opposition to his nomination came entirely from Democrats; the Republican senators unanimously backed him, along with many prominent Democrats, including the two Democratic senators from Florida, Bob Graham and Bill Nelson, and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle.
Resignation controversy
On May 5, 2006 Goss' resignation from the CIA directorship was announced at a joint press briefing with President Bush at the White House. The resignation, which took place effective immediately, came as a surprise and there was speculation in the press concerning the reasons of the sudden announcement. Representative Jane Harman, the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence said of Goss' resignation in the New York Times, "It could not have been handled more clumsily."
Goss may have lost a turf battle with Negroponte. The Los Angeles Times reported "Goss was pushed out by Negroponte after clashes between them over Goss' management style, as well as his reluctance to surrender CIA personnel and resources to new organizations set up to combat terrorism and weapons proliferation." The Weekly Standard also noted that Goss wanted intelligence analysts to get more exposure to intelligence gathering and Negroponte planned to move them from the CIA over to DNI, further from intelligence gathering. While the editors of Weekly Standard sided with Goss in this dispute, they believe Goss was forced out for other reasons:
- [W]e are concerned that Goss left, or was eased out, for reasons of greater policy significance. And if this is the case, Goss's leaving is not a good sign. Goss is a political conservative and an institutional reformer. He is pro-Bush Doctrine and pro-shaking-up-the-CIA.
- John Negroponte, so far as we can tell, shares none of these sympathies. Negroponte is therefore more in tune with large swaths of the intelligence community and the State Department. If Negroponte forced Goss out and is allowed to pick Goss's successor--if Goss isn't replaced with a reformer committed to fighting and winning the war on terror, broadly and rightly understood--then Goss's departure will prove to have been a weakening moment in an administration increasingly susceptible to moments of weakness. [12]
Rampant speculation by the Washington Post and other news media is tempered somewhat by Robert Novak's May 11 column in which he writes "Goss faced a disintegrating CIA. The major analytic functions were passed to the DNI. Special operations were going over to the Pentagon. Negroponte was no help to Goss. Although bizarre reasons for Goss's resignation have been floated on the Internet, sources say Negroponte simply suggested his time was up."
Law enforcement officials executed search warrants on May 12, 2006, on the house and office of the CIA's executive director Kyle "Dusty" Foggo as part of an investigation into corruption involving agency contracts, the FBI said.[13] The FBI agents arrived about 8 am EST, and a white Chevrolet van was backed up to the carport of Foggo's split-level brick home and a man wearing latex gloves emerged from the house at one point.
Former Clinton National Security Council member Ivo Daalder, who is now with the Center for American Progress and the Brookings Institute, charged Goss with creating "a climate of fear and intimidation at the CIA that produced a reluctance to take risks, which is the last thing you want in an intelligence agency" and suggested that "Porter Goss was such an absolute disaster for the agency and our national security that his departure comes not a day too soon."[14]
Notes
External links
- Biography
- Porter Goss at NNDB
- A Cloak But No Dagger (5/18/2002 Washington Post interview)
- Pentagon cheers CIA shake-up
- Goss says CIA leak not worthy of committee action
- Secret Agent Man
- GOVEXEC.com: Rep. Porter Goss
- Sources: Goss front-runner for CIA post
- Porter Goss as CIA Director?
- OnTheIssues - Porter Goss
- Opening statement of Porter Goss to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, on September 14, 2004
- U.S. Senate voting record for the confirmation of Porter Goss
