Thoughts On The Goss Resignation
Surprise doesn't even begin to cover it. There are rumblings that this was part of the "shake-up" in the administration. There are even suppositions that Goss's resignation might be in connection with the Duke Cunningham bribery case. Whatever the allegations are, what matters to me is the fact that the administration has lost an ally within the CIA that is showing more and more aversion to working with the administration. There is obviously some tension between the White House and the CIA. In my opinion it stems from the "bureaucrats" that are sitting in key positions within the CIA that think the administration is moving in all the wrong directions.
Ahh ... One must love interneccine fighting. And I'm sure those holdovers fromt he previous administration believe they, and they alone, have the power to command how the government will work, move and operate. (Delusions of granduer doesn't even begin to explain how these idiots think.)
The CIA is an integral part of the intelligence community. And I know there are a lot of people who dislike the CIA, and it's history in doing dirty work. Clinton cut back the human intelligence side (that would be spooks ont he ground gathering hard-core intel on our enemies) because that administration didn't like the idea of recruiting "unsavory characters." This shows that the previous administration had no clue what intelligence gathering entails, or what lengths such characters go through to help our our intelligence efforts.
Our enemies aren't going to trust a guy in a three-piece suit. They're going to sniff out a planted mole that doesn't seem to know what they're doing. Indigenous people in a country are easy to recruit, and can blend in well enough to serve as a conduit for information. The Cold War was rife with people the CIA had recruited. Those people did what they could to help our efforts against the Soviet Union. But, when the Berlin Wall came down, and Gorbachev started Russia on it's new course of "glasnost" and "perestroika," many within the US government felt that the CIA had its curtain call in the world; that is was no longer needed.
Changes made led us down a road where we relied less on clandestine intelligence operations, and more on the roads to diplomacy. The Clinton administration ushered in a new era where the CIA was looked at as a dinosaur. The administration did a good job of turning the CIA into little more than a neutered pet. The problem with that is that when the time comes to break the glass, and order those forces into the field to assist us in certain endeavors, it couldn't. At least it couldn't do that as effectively as it did during the Cold War.
So, the defanged beast couldn't function, and the bureaucrats moved in. They tried to keep the CIA in line with the methodology of the current administration. When Clinton left, and Gore lost, some of the people still there resented the incoming president. And they still do. The revelation of Mary McCarthy's leaking of a classified program to the press is a clear example of how some partisanship was still evident at the CIA. The first thing that bloggers did was to look into her past political dealings. They revealed that she was a staunch Democrat, with a tendency to support the most liberal of people, including John Kerry; a man who clearly disliked the secretive nature of the CIA, and comeone who didn't understand what the organization was about.
Intelligence agencies can't function int he open. To reveal the secrets they're privy to is a detriment. Not only is it so to the agency, but to national security. The Global War On Terror, while it does have a "battlefield" also has shadows where much of this fight is taking place. Up until this week, we had no idea the measures the military was taking in trying to catch Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Now we know. Strike Team 145 is comprised of Army Delta, Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, and Marine Force Recon going after Zarqawi in Iraq, and they've come close twice to getting him. Again, operations in secret prove to be our greatest asset in this war.
When President Bush appointed Porter Goss to head up the CIA, he knew what he was getting. While the Left complained Goss would be another "yes man" for the president, solid observers (like us "pajama-clad muckrakers") knew that the president had appointed a former CIA officer who understood what the agency was supposed to be about. We also knew that he was going to start weeding out those that openly and bitterly opposed the administration.
See, the Left fails to get the fact that when you work for a branch of the government, you take orders from your superiors. If you're in Justice, that order comes down fromt he Attorney General. If you're in the CIA, it comes from the DCI (Director of Central Intelligence). And either way you slice it, those orders come from the President of the United States. He's the boss. The buck stops with him. However, amny people didn't like that. (Case in point: Since when does a low-level analyst get to decide who goes out on fact-finding missions the way Valerie Plame did when she recommended her husband for the Niger trip?) I'm sure that's the sort of CIA the Left would love to have; where people just arbitrarily make decisions without going through the proper chain of command. But, that's not what this president is about. Being pro-active means that your ideas are helping the country, not miring it in bureaucratic bravo-sierra.
I've seen some reaction within the blogosphere:
The KosKiddies are absolutely giddy with delerium that Goss is about to be implicated in some sort of scandal. They're speculating that it's either in connection to Cunningham or to a prostitution ring. (Don't quit using those tin-foil hats guys.)
Over at Hot Air Allah Pundit has a round-up of reaction, including those from the news services. According to FOX News, the rumblings of his departure has been around for a couple of weeks. This from the FOX News report:
But one senior Democratic aide on the Senate Intelligence Committee told FOX News that "there were rumblings" about his departure. Committee staffers were told that the director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, was "not happy" with Goss. Negroponte was named to his position in April of 2005 and took over some of Goss' duties, such as briefing the president every morning; Goss also no longer sat atop the 16 intelligence agencies.
I'm sure Negroponte wasn't happy with Goss, as much as he wasn't happy with Rep. Pete Hoekstra and bloggers demanding the release of the Saddam Documents. Negroponte, in my opinion, is another problem for the administration. This is more than evident after the president ordered him three times to release those documents, and it wasn't until Stephen Hayes and Pete Hoekstra started raising a tremendous stink over it that he relented. If Negroponte succeeds Goss, it's a bad move.
And the former "spook" at In From The Cold weighs in with a couple of things: (I won't repeat the quote that Marcie used.)
Liberal pundits are already spinning Goss's resignation as a sign of serious problems at Langley. In reality, the former Congressman is more a victim of bureaucratic wars. Goss was confirmed as CIA director at about the same time that Ambassador John Negroponte became the nation's first Director of National Intelligence (DNI). That represented a watershed in the history of the nation's intelligence community. For the first time, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) was no longer America's top-ranking intelligence officer; instead, he became just another agency director, on the same level as the Directors of the National Security Agency (NSA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA).
The distinction is important. No longer is the CIA Director the president's primary intelligence advisor--that responsibility now belongs to John Negroponte. Additionally, the responsibility for preparing the president's daily briefing falls on the DNI, not the CIA.
Has anyone entertained the possibility that Negroponte was one of Goss's obstacles in dealing with the White House. That it wasn't just the leakers in the CIA and the bureaucratic battles that wore him down, but rather the fact that Negroponte deemed what the president saw and what he didn't see? Former Spook makes a valid point that it used to be that the DCI was the top man preparing what the president saw in terms of intelligence. Now, maybe I'm making something out of nothing, but it looks to me like Goss simply got fed up.
Also, it was noted by Allah Pundit that President Bush stated that Porter Goss did what he was assigned to do. This sounds like spin ("Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" moment, anyone?) because Goss didn't even get a chance to finish half of what he went there to do. In other words, his job wasn't finished yet.
In closing, I'd like to cite one more thing that caught my attention from Former Spook:
Consequently, the director's position may remain vacant for a while, and that could derail the reform campaign at Langley. To avoid that, President Bush should consider the appointment of an experienced intelligence manager who could move into the job quickly and seamlessly. IMO, one of the few men who could do that is the current Deputy Director of National Intelligence, General Mike Hayden. General Hayden isn't a CIA veteran, but he was extremely effective as Director of NSA for more than five years. During his tenure at Ft Meade, he reformed and reshaped that agency, clearing out bureaucratic deadwood, and boosting agency morale.
For those unfamiliar with Mike Hayden, here is his Wikipedia article. (As with anything from Wikipedia, take it with a grain of salt.) Here is his Air Force bio, and the bio from the NSA/CSS. Also, here is the statement from the DNI's office on the resignation of Porter Goss.
All I know is that the presidnet had better choose Goss's successor wisely, and keep in mind that whomever he chooses will have to be able to handle the anti-administration lackeys that still need to be gotten rid of. In addition, they'll still need to finish implementing Goss's reforms for the CIA, which include the necessity of having more intelligence officers--HUMINT--on the ground in the GWOT. (And no I don't care if they're "unsavory." Nasty men get closer to nasty men than clean-cut boys do.)
Publius II
Surprise doesn't even begin to cover it. There are rumblings that this was part of the "shake-up" in the administration. There are even suppositions that Goss's resignation might be in connection with the Duke Cunningham bribery case. Whatever the allegations are, what matters to me is the fact that the administration has lost an ally within the CIA that is showing more and more aversion to working with the administration. There is obviously some tension between the White House and the CIA. In my opinion it stems from the "bureaucrats" that are sitting in key positions within the CIA that think the administration is moving in all the wrong directions.
Ahh ... One must love interneccine fighting. And I'm sure those holdovers fromt he previous administration believe they, and they alone, have the power to command how the government will work, move and operate. (Delusions of granduer doesn't even begin to explain how these idiots think.)
The CIA is an integral part of the intelligence community. And I know there are a lot of people who dislike the CIA, and it's history in doing dirty work. Clinton cut back the human intelligence side (that would be spooks ont he ground gathering hard-core intel on our enemies) because that administration didn't like the idea of recruiting "unsavory characters." This shows that the previous administration had no clue what intelligence gathering entails, or what lengths such characters go through to help our our intelligence efforts.
Our enemies aren't going to trust a guy in a three-piece suit. They're going to sniff out a planted mole that doesn't seem to know what they're doing. Indigenous people in a country are easy to recruit, and can blend in well enough to serve as a conduit for information. The Cold War was rife with people the CIA had recruited. Those people did what they could to help our efforts against the Soviet Union. But, when the Berlin Wall came down, and Gorbachev started Russia on it's new course of "glasnost" and "perestroika," many within the US government felt that the CIA had its curtain call in the world; that is was no longer needed.
Changes made led us down a road where we relied less on clandestine intelligence operations, and more on the roads to diplomacy. The Clinton administration ushered in a new era where the CIA was looked at as a dinosaur. The administration did a good job of turning the CIA into little more than a neutered pet. The problem with that is that when the time comes to break the glass, and order those forces into the field to assist us in certain endeavors, it couldn't. At least it couldn't do that as effectively as it did during the Cold War.
So, the defanged beast couldn't function, and the bureaucrats moved in. They tried to keep the CIA in line with the methodology of the current administration. When Clinton left, and Gore lost, some of the people still there resented the incoming president. And they still do. The revelation of Mary McCarthy's leaking of a classified program to the press is a clear example of how some partisanship was still evident at the CIA. The first thing that bloggers did was to look into her past political dealings. They revealed that she was a staunch Democrat, with a tendency to support the most liberal of people, including John Kerry; a man who clearly disliked the secretive nature of the CIA, and comeone who didn't understand what the organization was about.
Intelligence agencies can't function int he open. To reveal the secrets they're privy to is a detriment. Not only is it so to the agency, but to national security. The Global War On Terror, while it does have a "battlefield" also has shadows where much of this fight is taking place. Up until this week, we had no idea the measures the military was taking in trying to catch Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Now we know. Strike Team 145 is comprised of Army Delta, Navy SEALs, Army Rangers, and Marine Force Recon going after Zarqawi in Iraq, and they've come close twice to getting him. Again, operations in secret prove to be our greatest asset in this war.
When President Bush appointed Porter Goss to head up the CIA, he knew what he was getting. While the Left complained Goss would be another "yes man" for the president, solid observers (like us "pajama-clad muckrakers") knew that the president had appointed a former CIA officer who understood what the agency was supposed to be about. We also knew that he was going to start weeding out those that openly and bitterly opposed the administration.
See, the Left fails to get the fact that when you work for a branch of the government, you take orders from your superiors. If you're in Justice, that order comes down fromt he Attorney General. If you're in the CIA, it comes from the DCI (Director of Central Intelligence). And either way you slice it, those orders come from the President of the United States. He's the boss. The buck stops with him. However, amny people didn't like that. (Case in point: Since when does a low-level analyst get to decide who goes out on fact-finding missions the way Valerie Plame did when she recommended her husband for the Niger trip?) I'm sure that's the sort of CIA the Left would love to have; where people just arbitrarily make decisions without going through the proper chain of command. But, that's not what this president is about. Being pro-active means that your ideas are helping the country, not miring it in bureaucratic bravo-sierra.
I've seen some reaction within the blogosphere:
The KosKiddies are absolutely giddy with delerium that Goss is about to be implicated in some sort of scandal. They're speculating that it's either in connection to Cunningham or to a prostitution ring. (Don't quit using those tin-foil hats guys.)
Over at Hot Air Allah Pundit has a round-up of reaction, including those from the news services. According to FOX News, the rumblings of his departure has been around for a couple of weeks. This from the FOX News report:
But one senior Democratic aide on the Senate Intelligence Committee told FOX News that "there were rumblings" about his departure. Committee staffers were told that the director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, was "not happy" with Goss. Negroponte was named to his position in April of 2005 and took over some of Goss' duties, such as briefing the president every morning; Goss also no longer sat atop the 16 intelligence agencies.
I'm sure Negroponte wasn't happy with Goss, as much as he wasn't happy with Rep. Pete Hoekstra and bloggers demanding the release of the Saddam Documents. Negroponte, in my opinion, is another problem for the administration. This is more than evident after the president ordered him three times to release those documents, and it wasn't until Stephen Hayes and Pete Hoekstra started raising a tremendous stink over it that he relented. If Negroponte succeeds Goss, it's a bad move.
And the former "spook" at In From The Cold weighs in with a couple of things: (I won't repeat the quote that Marcie used.)
Liberal pundits are already spinning Goss's resignation as a sign of serious problems at Langley. In reality, the former Congressman is more a victim of bureaucratic wars. Goss was confirmed as CIA director at about the same time that Ambassador John Negroponte became the nation's first Director of National Intelligence (DNI). That represented a watershed in the history of the nation's intelligence community. For the first time, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) was no longer America's top-ranking intelligence officer; instead, he became just another agency director, on the same level as the Directors of the National Security Agency (NSA), the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA).
The distinction is important. No longer is the CIA Director the president's primary intelligence advisor--that responsibility now belongs to John Negroponte. Additionally, the responsibility for preparing the president's daily briefing falls on the DNI, not the CIA.
Has anyone entertained the possibility that Negroponte was one of Goss's obstacles in dealing with the White House. That it wasn't just the leakers in the CIA and the bureaucratic battles that wore him down, but rather the fact that Negroponte deemed what the president saw and what he didn't see? Former Spook makes a valid point that it used to be that the DCI was the top man preparing what the president saw in terms of intelligence. Now, maybe I'm making something out of nothing, but it looks to me like Goss simply got fed up.
Also, it was noted by Allah Pundit that President Bush stated that Porter Goss did what he was assigned to do. This sounds like spin ("Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job" moment, anyone?) because Goss didn't even get a chance to finish half of what he went there to do. In other words, his job wasn't finished yet.
In closing, I'd like to cite one more thing that caught my attention from Former Spook:
Consequently, the director's position may remain vacant for a while, and that could derail the reform campaign at Langley. To avoid that, President Bush should consider the appointment of an experienced intelligence manager who could move into the job quickly and seamlessly. IMO, one of the few men who could do that is the current Deputy Director of National Intelligence, General Mike Hayden. General Hayden isn't a CIA veteran, but he was extremely effective as Director of NSA for more than five years. During his tenure at Ft Meade, he reformed and reshaped that agency, clearing out bureaucratic deadwood, and boosting agency morale.
For those unfamiliar with Mike Hayden, here is his Wikipedia article. (As with anything from Wikipedia, take it with a grain of salt.) Here is his Air Force bio, and the bio from the NSA/CSS. Also, here is the statement from the DNI's office on the resignation of Porter Goss.
All I know is that the presidnet had better choose Goss's successor wisely, and keep in mind that whomever he chooses will have to be able to handle the anti-administration lackeys that still need to be gotten rid of. In addition, they'll still need to finish implementing Goss's reforms for the CIA, which include the necessity of having more intelligence officers--HUMINT--on the ground in the GWOT. (And no I don't care if they're "unsavory." Nasty men get closer to nasty men than clean-cut boys do.)
Publius II
posted by Syd And Vaughn | 1:48 PM
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