CIA Chief Goss Resigns

CIA Director Porter J. Goss resigned under pressure Friday, ending a tumultuous 19-month tenure marked by clashes with the nation’s new intelligence chief over the CIA’s reduced role in the restructured spy community.

U.S. intelligence and other officials said Goss was pushed out by Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte, whose growing disenchantment with the CIA director was shared by members of President Bush’s intelligence advisory board. The White House is expected to name a replacement as early as next week.

As director, Goss focused on expanding the CIA’s clandestine service and pushing it to take more operational risks. But the former Florida congressman was often faulted for a lax management style, for alienating veteran CIA officers -- and for his reluctance to surrender resources to espionage organizations created after the Sept. 11 attacks to combat terrorism and weapons proliferation.

In a hastily arranged session in the Oval Office, President Bush said that Goss had submitted his resignation Friday morning and that “I’ve accepted it.”

Bush said that Goss had “led ably” at the CIA during a time of difficult transitions and that the plans Goss had laid would “help make this country a safer place and help us win the war on terror.”

In a prepared statement, Goss, 67, did not explain his reasons for resigning. He said that under his leadership, the agency had “made great strides on all fronts,” and that he would remain on the job in the coming weeks “to ensure a smooth and professional transition.”

Early speculation on who would replace Goss centered on Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden, Negroponte’s top deputy. Other possible candidates mentioned in intelligence circles included White House homeland security advisor Frances Townsend and former CIA Director Robert M. Gates, who served under President George H.W. Bush.

Goss’ abrupt departure leaves a leadership vacuum in the espionage community at a time when the CIA is under mounting pressure to produce better intelligence on a host of difficult targets, including the insurgency in Iraq, the threat posed by terrorist groups including Al Qaeda, and Iran’s nuclear program.

Goss’ ouster in his second year on the job also threatens to return the agency to the sort of destabilizing leadership shuffles it experienced during the 1990s, when five directors held the top job in as many years.

Many agency veterans believe that leadership turmoil and deep budget cuts set the stage for failures before the Sept. 11 attacks and for erroneous prewar assessments of Iraq’s alleged biological, chemical and nuclear weapons programs.

Goss, who worked for the CIA as an undercover officer in the 1960s, had hoped to leave a legacy of restoring the agency’s clandestine capabilities and can-do reputation. But he stepped into the job just as it was being stripped of much of its clout.

Mark Lowenthal, a former senior agency official who worked with Goss on the House Intelligence Committee, said the cards were stacked against the director from the outset.

“He took over for a guy there [former CIA Director George J. Tenet] who was there for seven years and was very popular,” Lowenthal said. “When the agency was being beaten up for 9/11 and Iraq. And he took over during this long, drawn-out transition to the DNI [director of national intelligence]. I don’t care what your talents are, that’s extremely difficult.”

Goss, who took charge of the CIA in September 2004, was the last director with authority over the nation’s other intelligence agencies. He soon had to surrender that authority, when Congress voted to overhaul the nation’s intelligence community and Negroponte was appointed to oversee the activities of the CIA and 15 other agencies.

Goss said that he supported the changes and that he sought to ensure their success. But critics in the intelligence community accused him of dragging his heels in several crucial areas.

Under his leadership, the CIA resisted requests from Negroponte to provide personnel and resources to help establish Negroponte’s office, as well as to new organizations including the National Counterterrorism Center and the National Counter Proliferation Center, according to current and former intelligence officials.

“Relations between the CIA and the office of the DNI have been rocky,” said John Brennan, who until last year served as director of the National Counterterrorism Center, or NCTC, a clearinghouse for terror threat information. “In my view, the agency was reluctant to understand that the NCTC had primary responsibility on the analytic front, and therefore did not adapt the way it needed to.”

Brennan also said morale at the CIA had suffered over the last two years. “A lot of the agency’s responsibilities and capabilities have withered in some respects because they were unsure of their role in the community,” he said.

Several officials declined to be identified because they are not authorized to talk to the press. Those loyal to Goss said that despite his support of the overhaul, he became increasingly frustrated with how much the CIA was being asked to surrender.

“Goss believes very firmly the Central Intelligence Agency should remain just that -- central,” said one U.S. intelligence official who spoke on condition of anonymity. “I won’t deny that there were some tensions over the bleeding of the agency ... over resources being provided to other organizations in the community, micromanagement, things of that nature.”

Negroponte praised Goss in a statement Friday, saying Goss had “worked tirelessly and effectively during a period of transition and reform to strengthen our human intelligence capabilities.” Negroponte described Goss as “my friend for almost 50 years,” referring to their time as Yale University classmates.

But in what some said was a sign of friction between the two, Goss did not mention Negroponte in his statement.

Because he had been a CIA case officer and later chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Goss was long seen as a candidate to run the CIA. But when he was tapped for the job, critics questioned whether Goss -- who had never run a large organization -- had the management skills or the energy to manage such a sprawling enterprise.

Goss had often expressed his desire to retire to his farm in Virginia, and even before the CIA job came open had to be coaxed by the White House into running to keep his seat in Congress several years ago.

In his statement, Goss said he knew what he was getting into when he took the job and “embraced the challenge of leading this agency through historic change.”

But critics questioned the results.

“Sadly, what I saw was demoralization in the senior ranks, quizzical looks on the faces of new recruits, and a lot of people deployed in the far reaches of the world who could not describe what the mission of their agency was,” said the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jane Harman of Venice.

Goss was also heavily criticized for leaving much of the day-to-day operations of the agency to an inner circle he brought with him from Capitol Hill, a group that alienated many senior CIA officers. The early months of his tenure were marked by an exodus of veteran case officers who held high-ranking positions in the agency but clashed with Goss aides over personnel issues and other matters.

Some of those tactics and conflicts may have come back to hurt Goss.

Among those who departed after confrontations with senior Goss aides was Mary Margaret Graham, who went on to become one of Negroponte’s top deputies, in charge of coordinating the collection activities of the CIA and all of the nation’s spy agencies.

One senior government official said that Negroponte “a long time ago made clear to Goss there needed to be some staff changes” and that Goss “doomed his tenure by bringing [congressional aides] with him.”

Goss also took heat for some of his hiring decisions. He surprised many CIA veterans when he chose a midlevel logistics officer, Kyle Dustin “Dusty” Foggo, to serve as executive director, the No. 3 position in the agency.

Foggo has since been linked to a figure in the bribery scandal involving former Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-Rancho Santa Fe). Foggo is a lifelong friend of one of the San Diego businessmen accused of bribing Cunningham to win defense contracts, and Foggo is under investigation by the CIA inspector general for a contract he awarded to the businessman to provide bottled water and other supplies to CIA operatives in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A White House spokesman declined to discuss whether the administration had selected a replacement for Goss. But a senior administration official said the White House would not “allow the position of director of the CIA to languish for too long.”