A Question for Porter Goss

by emptywheel

I wonder, Porter Goss. Two weeks ago, when you fired Mary McCarthy just weeks shy of her retirement, did you have any idea you'd be resigning yourself so quickly?

I'm just asking, you see, because I find the timing rather ironic. And perhaps even suspect. A mere two weeks ago, you were conducting what, by all appearances now looks like a partisan witch hunt. Making an example out of a woman who gave some money to Bush's political opponent. But who didn't, according to reports and a little logic, have anything to do with the leaks about black prisons that supposedly have set our WOT back so far.

And then, remarkably, just 5 days later, journalists everywhere are suddenly able to confirm the rumors they've been hearing for months (but couldn't find proof for before), rumors about whores and limos and poker games and questionable hiring practices. Not only confirm the rumors, but promise, in the not too distant future, pictures.

Fast forward another week, and here we are. You've issued one denial after another that your or your buddy Dusty Foggo had anything to do with those whores we've been hearing about. But somehow, just two weeks to the day after firing someone for what might be regarded as specious reasons, we hear you're stepping down.

I'm having a tough time deciding whether I believe in justice, or just in the determination of spooks who have gotten fed up with the bullshit.

Update: One of the things Goss mentioned in his resignation is keeping secrets:

When I came to CIA in September of 2004, I wanted to accomplish some very specific things, and we have made great strides on all fronts, from our field-forward approach, to welcoming record numbers of new employees who are today receiving better training than ever before. We have reintegrated support, and improved tradecraft across the board -- part of which is keeping our secrets. We also are reinvigorating and enhancing our analytic capabilities with an even stronger role for alternative analysis. And, there is no question, that CIA remains the leader of cutting edge research and technology, which enables our security mission.

"I may have gotten fired in disgrace, but I fired one woman because she didn't keep secrets!!"

Actually, there's another interesting bit, given the rumors that Goss was fired because he refused to fire Foggo (probably owes him a poker debt or something):

I am proud of CIA's leadership team. They share a deep dedication to improving the Agency's capabilities, and are driven by a complete dedication to mission. Given the new IC architecture, it was imperative to have a team that worked not as individual directorates, but as one. They have helped me, and CIA as a whole, in our ongoing inter-agency discussions related to this new architecture.

Defiant to the end?

Comments

[yam]

I just want to want to know what sort of idiot attends drunken poker games where CIA employees are present? Fer cryin' out loud, don't you have any fookin' brains? Can't you even smell the potential for a set up?

And Goss got his pecker slammed in the door because he broke the Golden Rule:

DON'T FUCK WITH THE COMPANY!

["When It Rains..."]

This is old stuff.

He got poisoned becasue he was good at it.

[Sara]

Right now I am looking at an outline that works something like this.

Duke Cunningham is looking at nine years, perhaps somewhat less if he cooperates. He was sent to a classification Center in Oklahoma where it would be determined whether he went to something approaching super-max conditions, or one or the rumored country club prison camps with somewhat less regerous discipline. I would expect that one thing the investigators would want him to sing about would be all the earmarks he knew about in Armed Services Appropriations and Intelligence Appropriations. I suspect Duke is deep into a comic opera, and one matter in the script has to do with Poker Parties, Whores and Cigars (for smoking -- not as sex toys), and some Wilkes/Wade CIA earmarks and the "Gosslings" who arrived from the Hill with Goss. (A;;arently that is what management is called at Langley).

I suspect the "Gosslings" have been a subject of Duke's opera with the whole Shirlington Limo deal part of the story. They did the Earmarks while on Capitol Hill -- and the contracts once they reached the agency. I don't know if Mary O McCarthy fits in here or not -- perhaps she answered some of the FBI investigators questions related to something to do with contracts. I suspect there are many connections and in the next weeks lots of new stuff will emerge. Lots of push and push back. Dana Priest was on MSNBC and said the Post would have a major story tomorrow. She did not look all that unhappy.

[emptywheel]

Nice outline, Sara. I'm just going to keep asking questions so you can provide the smart answers in the comments...

I really don't know whether McCarthy is related. Worth keeping in mind she was with the Inspector General. But it may be entirely coincidental.

[viget]

EW--

Maybe she was the one investigating Foggo? Perhaps cooperating with the FBI on this?

So when Goss wouldn't fire his good buddy Foggo, he went after the investigator instead. But that only enabled more leaks.

Myself, I hope there are pictures and some of them get released. The public needs to know what a mockery of a government we have.

[vachon]

The ghost of George Tenant is sitting in the big chair with a stogey, a large whiskey and his feet on the desk. Bet the farm.

[margaret]

It's all rather sad, isn't it? It's the only government we have right now, and we can't help but be ashamed, collectively, at how sorry it is.

After the jokes have been told, we are left with the sour taste that only incompetents are left to run the important work of the country. And, what happens if those fools at the WH want to go to war with Iran? What kind of intelligence are we going to have, and are we ever going to trust it again?

[Sally]

Interesting that we have not heard from Negroponte that he hearts Goss who has saved us from terrorists and who whipped the CIA intelligence gathering into fantastic shape and who dramatically improved the morale at the Agency and that's why he fired him. We don't even have a "No comment." Have none of our intrepid reporters asked him to speak or is he hiding out at the Club and unavailable for comment?

There are so many possible reasons Goss left and none of them comforting.

[JohnLopresti]

I wonder if the posthaste departure of Goss eases the way for retired Senator Bob Graham to participate in hearings after November elections into the functionality of the group of 8, though DeWine had plans to resolve the critiques from the likes of Graham and Harman.

If anything, this administration's remakes are proving once again that unilateralism wears blinders unless it is attuned; but, given the previous two years' record in the second term of Bush, replacing demimoderates with even more evangelical reactionaries, there is a velleity there to appoint yet another proponent of the unitary executive to the Agency.

However, the Agency exists in a hybrid zone of government bridging interbranch gaps. As a commenter in one of your threads observed, wedding military to CIA though apparently most likely, is beyond the bounds of historical compartmentalization which has kept those two distinctly separate. Also as some in the cyberworld have noted obliquely, the bond between air force and the wiretap datamining program ongoing these past four years has welded airborne technology to other elements of the security apparatus. Perhaps the mere constitution of HomeLandSecurity proved to be such an amorphous exercise that the intelligentsia as well as the go-fer branch decided mutual consolidation the most self-preserving course.

On the surface the Goss departure precipitously seems like an opportunity, as well as yet another in a string of risks for the Agency. The loudest voices in the administration should make an interesting cacaphony during the next few days until the replacement appointment is finalized.