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May 15th, 2006 - Intelligence:
Goss Goes Out - But the CIA’s Struggles Go On |
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Intelligence: Goss Goes Out
- But the CIA’s Struggles Go On By Mark Hosenball, Evan Thomas and Michael Isikoff Newsweek May 15, 2006 If there was one government
agency that needed to improve after 9/11, it was the CIA. Apparently,
however, the spy agency has only weakened. Forced out last week as CIA
director, Porter Goss leaves an outfit that has far more resources than it
did five years ago, but still seems to be struggling with low morale and turf
battles. Emblematic of the CIA's woes is its number-three man, Executive
Director Kyle (Dusty) Foggo. His story is a depressing tale of reform gone
awry. After 9/11 and the
intelligence fiasco over Iraqi WMD, the CIA bureaucracy was thought to be
leaky and rebellious by many White House officials. A former junior case officer
at the CIA who had become chairman of the House intelligence committee, Goss
replaced an embattled George Tenet two years ago. His first move was to bring
in several of his top Hill aides to clean house. They quickly became known as
the Gosslings by resentful agency staffers. Foggo was an old CIA hand, but
not a member of the elite Clandestine Service running foreign agents. Rather,
he was a logistics expert well known to junketing congressmen who visited
Frankfurt, Germany, where Foggo was based. At the agency, Foggo soon
became embroiled in a turf struggle between the agency's Counterterrorist
Center and the newly created National Counterterrorism Center under the
control of the new director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte.
(Ironically, the DNI was set up by post-9/11 intel reformers to help end turf
battles.) Negroponte complained to President George W. Bush, who was also
hearing loud grumbles about Goss's poor leadership of the CIA from old intel
hands and experts on the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.
Though Bush had once been friendly with Goss, a fellow Yale man, he was
persuaded to let Goss go, offering only a few words of faint praise at an
Oval Office farewell for the cameras. But the agency's problems
may only get worse, and one reason is Foggo. Federal investigators are
looking at the ties of the CIA's "Ex Dir" to a congressional
bribery scandal. Foggo was a high-school football teammate and college buddy
of Brent Wilkes's, a defense contractor who was identified as an unindicted
co-conspirator when former San Diego congressman and ex-Navy air ace Randy
(Duke) Cunningham pleaded guilty. The CIA has acknowledged that its internal
watchdog is investigating if Foggo helped steer any contracts to Wilkes.
According to three sources who declined to be identified commenting on the
details of a government probe, there are also indications that the Feds are
interested in Foggo's role in the wider Cunningham bribery scandal. Recent
news reports have alleged that Wilkes (who has not been charged with any
crime) sponsored poker parties at the Watergate and other expensive
Washington hotels, and that he may have been involved in a scheme to provide
prostitutes to the disgraced Cunningham. Wilkes has reportedly denied the
allegation through his attorney. Former Texas congressman
Charlie Wilson told NEWSWEEK that he attended two or three poker games with
federal contractor Wilkes and his cronies at the Watergate, but saw no
hookers and quit going to the games because he was bothered by the cigar
smoke. An eyewitness (who asked not to be identified commenting on sensitive
matters) told NEWSWEEK that in 1999, Foggo, Cunningham and a former Goss aide
and ex-CIA official known as Nine Fingers (identified to NEWSWEEK as Brant
Bassett) attended an all-male Wilkes poker party at the Westin Grand Hotel in
Washington. (Bassett and lawyers for Wilkes and Cunningham declined to
comment; CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano told NEWSWEEK: "Mr. Foggo
maintains that government contracts for which he was responsible were
properly awarded and administered. If he attended occasional card games with
friends over the years, Mr. Foggo insists they were that and nothing
more.") The White House is expected to move quickly to replace Goss. The
leading candidate appeared to be Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, currently
Negroponte's deputy intel czar. That might calm some of the squabbling
between the DNI and the CIA. But Hayden could face a rough confirmation fight
in the Senate. As chief of the National Security Agency, Hayden was a
principal architect of warrantless electronic eavesdropping on Qaeda suspects
inside the United States. Old CIA hands were not sorry
to see Goss go. But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld may miss his former
bureaucratic rival. The Pentagon has increasingly horned in on the CIA's
territory, using Special Forces to run covert operations and gather intel.
According to a former senior administration official who did not wish to be
identified discussing high-level meetings, Rummy was only too glad to let
Goss brief policymakers. Goss often appeared uncertain of his facts and
tended to fumble and wander in his presentations. The more tangled up Goss
became, the more Rumsfeld sensed he could steal the CIA's thunder. External link:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12666396/site/newsweek/ |