Another Shoe Drops at CIA

The head of the CIA’s analytic division told her staff Tuesday that she was resigning, becoming the latest high-level departure in an ongoing shake-up of the agency’s senior ranks by new director Porter J. Goss.

Jami A. Miscik told colleagues that her last day as deputy director of intelligence would be Feb. 4, according to an internal CIA e-mail obtained by The Times.

She indicated in the message that she had been forced out.

“Every [director of central intelligence] has a desire to have his own team in place to implement his vision and to offer him counsel,” Miscik said in the e-mail. “This is a natural evolution of the leadership of our intelligence profession.”

Miscik, 46, had held the job since May 2002, and had been the target of criticism because her department was largely responsible for erroneous prewar assessments that Iraq had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. The assessments provided much of the basis for the Bush administration’s case for war.

But Miscik has been praised for owning up to problems in the agency’s analysis branch and for pushing in the last year for broad changes designed to fix problems that plagued the agency in its work on Iraq.

And though CIA analysts made numerous errors on Iraq, the main prewar assessment on the country’s weapons supplies was done by the National Intelligence Council, which drew upon input from many U.S. intelligence agencies.

In her e-mail, Miscik alluded to the troubles, saying, “When intelligence proves imperfect, you are the first to seek improvements and change.”

A CIA spokesman declined to comment, saying the agency did not discuss personnel matters. Former CIA officials familiar with the matter said that Miscik was pushed out by Goss shortly before Christmas.

One former official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the matter “wasn’t handled in a particularly classy fashion.” Sources said the request to step down was not delivered by Goss but by the agency’s executive director.

“It’s understandable that a new CIA director would want to have his own team,” the former official said. “But it’s unfortunate they’re losing somebody like Jami, who in most circumstances would be exactly the kind of person you would want to have to solve problems.”

Miscik’s departure clears the way for Goss and his aides to begin revamping the agency’s directorate of intelligence, which employs thousands of analysts and experts, and is responsible for many of the most important intelligence reports supplied to top government officials. Among them is the daily brief delivered to the president.

Agency sources said Goss had not named a successor to Miscik. One of her deputies, Scott White, recently took a senior position at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which is responsible for analyzing satellite imagery. Her other deputy, Ben Bonk, remains at the CIA.

Miscik joins an exodus from the agency’s senior ranks in recent months that some intelligence officials contend has badly damaged morale at the agency and sapped it of leadership at a crucial time in the war on terrorism and the struggles to put down an insurgency in Iraq.

CIA critics, however, have characterized the changes as a necessary overhaul of an agency that Goss had called dysfunctional in the wake of costly intelligence failures surrounding the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the war in Iraq.

The agency’s former executive director, A.B. “Buzzy” Krongard, was fired by Goss shortly after he took over as CIA director in late September.

John E. McLaughlin, the deputy director of the agency, announced his retirement last month. Days later, the two top officials in the CIA’s clandestine service, Stephen R. Kappes and Michael J. Sulick, resigned after clashing with one of Goss’ aides.

Miscik, who was born in Chicago and grew up in Redondo Beach, was a close ally of former CIA Director George J. Tenet, and began her career at the CIA in 1983 as an economic analyst.