|
Post by Moses on Nov 15, 2004 1:58:16 GMT -5
Reknowned Zionists back "shake-up": McCain Backs CIA Shake-up By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, November 15, 2004; Page A02 Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) yesterday supported CIA Director Porter J. Goss's shake-up of the intelligence agency, which he described as "dysfunctional" and not providing President Bush with the information needed to conduct the war on terrorism. Reacting to stories about potential resignations of CIA officials in response to actions taken by Goss and his staff, McCain, appearing on ABC's "This Week With George Stephanopoulos," said, "A shake-up is absolutely necessary." But Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, which Goss formerly chaired, said the current uneasiness at the CIA has been caused by the "highly partisan inexperienced staff" that Goss brought to the agency. They have acted in a "heavy-handed or precipitous way," she said on CBS's "Face the Nation." Harman said she agrees that some changes are needed but that Goss's staff had offended agency personnel and she feared the departure "of some talented people," including Stephen R. Kappes, head of the clandestine service who has delayed making a retirement decision until today. McCain said that although the agency has "good and decent people" it had become dysfunctional and that "a shake-up is absolutely necessary." www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50314-2004Nov14.html
|
|
|
Post by Ropegun on Nov 15, 2004 21:40:08 GMT -5
First the CIA, and the defections and self exiling of upper level officials.
Who will leave or be sacked next?
This is pretty disturbing, considering who's replaced whom in all of this.
Looks as if the cons are consolidating their victory, and making sure they have the people in place they need to do their bidding.
This is like Star Wars and the stinking emporer.
Scary stuff , in my mind.
Peace.
|
|
|
Post by karpomrx on Nov 15, 2004 23:12:18 GMT -5
The values of fear and power are all that seem to be included in the plans of these madmen. It "works", in a sense, after all, few people are able to stand up against masive firepower. In 'Nam, when we were given all the drivel about "hearts and minds", we shortened it to"Grab them by the b*lls and their hearts and minds will follow." When Stalin recieved complaints about the treatment of church rights in Poland as the Soviet army drove the nazis out, he asked,"How many armored divisions does the Pope have?" How do we have a society in which a tiny number of sociopaths will not dominate the others to their own selfish ends? I doubt that there can be a political solution,however, it seems to be all we have at this time.
|
|
|
Post by Moses on Nov 16, 2004 11:39:13 GMT -5
November 16, 2004 C.I.A. Churning Continues as 2 Top Officials Resign By DOUGLAS JEHL ASHINGTON, Nov. 15 - The head of the Central Intelligence Agency's clandestine service and his deputy both resigned their posts on Monday, effective immediately, becoming the most significant casualties of an effort by Porter J. Goss to overhaul the agency's spying operations. The officials, Stephen R. Kappes, the deputy director for operations, and Michael Sulick, the associate deputy director, announced their moves at a morning staff meeting after days of clashes with advisers to Mr. Goss, the new director of the agency, intelligence officials said. Mr. Goss said in a written statement that the two men had "formally advised that they are stepping down.'' Mr. Goss has selected a covert officer who runs the agency's Counterterrorism Center to become the new chief of the clandestine service, known as the directorate of operations, the officials said. They declined to name the officer, a former chief of American espionage operations in Latin America[/color], because he is still under cover. They said he had been chosen despite having been removed from the Latin American post in 1997 after a C.I.A. inspector general's report criticized him for "a remarkable lack of judgment.'' At the time, many at the C.I.A. considered his removal to be unwarranted. Mr. Kappes and Mr. Sulick are highly regarded within the C.I.A. Their departures, which prompted loud protests from former intelligence officials, suggest that Mr. Goss is confident of having a mandate from the White House to make sweeping changes. The resignations of other senior officials within the operations directorate may follow, the former officials said. In his statement, Mr. Goss promised that "there will no gap in our operations fighting the global war on terror, nor in any of our other vital activities.'' The officer designated by Mr. Goss to take over the operations directorate was stripped of his Latin America post for attempting to intervene on behalf of a boyhood friend who had been arrested on narcotics charges in the Dominican Republic. An intelligence official noted that Mr. Goss had chosen him "in full knowledge'' of that episode, saying, "The guy served his time in the penalty box, and he went on to do good things.'' Mr. Goss said that the newly designated clandestine services chief had "a long history of strong performance in senior management positions, both domestically and abroad, most recently leading our agency's critical efforts against the terrorist target.'' With tensions between the C.I.A.'s new leadership and senior career officials still extraordinarily high, senior members of Congress appeared sharply divided in their view about whether Mr. Goss was going too far in reshaping the C.I.A. after a series of intelligence failures on Iraq and terrorism. Representative Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, called the moves unwarranted, and warned that they could well ignite an "implosion" within the C.I.A. But Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, said he believed that Mr. Goss should do "whatever is necessary" to clean house at the agency. [Note: Kristol was McCain's campaign manager-- ] In an interview, Mr. McCain said he told President Bush last week that "the C.I.A. was dysfunctional and unaccountable and that they refused to change." The senator said he believed the C.I.A. had acted as a "rogue agency" in recent months by leaking information about the war in Iraq that was seen as detrimental to Mr. Bush and his re-election campaign. Since before the American invasion in 2003, the White House has regarded the C.I.A. as too cautious about Mr. Bush's plan to wage war in Iraq. The tensions between the agency and the White House grew particularly sharp this summer after news reports disclosed the existence of a new National Intelligence Estimate that portrayed a dark future for Iraq in the coming 18 months. But Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, a Republican on the Intelligence Committee, said he was concerned about the impact of the moves by Mr. Goss. "There's no question when a new leader comes into an organization, there are adjustments made, and people leave," Mr. Hagel said in a telephone interview. But he added: "We have to be careful here that we don't lose an entire top tier of senior experienced C.I.A. operatives and managers. I've got some questions why these people have left, how many more are going to leave, and whether it's a personality conflict or a policy conflict. If we find ourselves without a senior group of C.I.A. hands, that would certainly not enhance American security and might undermine our security." Mr. Hagel said that he and other members of the Senate Intelligence Committee would seek answers to those questions in closed meetings this week. Mr. Kappes and Mr. Sulick threatened to resign last week after clashes with Patrick Murray, a former House Republican official who is Mr. Goss's chief of staff and whom they regarded as undermining their authority, former intelligence officials said. The men agreed to reconsider their decision over the weekend, intelligence officials said, but there was no indication that either Mr. Goss or the White House had tried to persuade them to stay on. Even before those clashes, Mr. Goss had begun to sound out the Counterterrorism Center chief and other candidates to take over the clandestine service, former intelligence officials said. The departures will leave Jami A. Miscik, the deputy director for intelligence, and Donald M. Kerr, the deputy director for science and technology, as the highest-ranking members still in place from the team of George J. Tenet, who stepped down as director of central intelligence in July. The C.I.A. said that Mr. Kappes and Mr. Sulick planned to retire, but would first join the agency's Career Transition Program. In that program, they will join John E. McLaughlin, the deputy director of central intelligence, who announced his resignation on Friday, effective Dec. 2, and at least four other senior officials who held high-level posts under Mr. Tenet. A. B. Krongard, the No. 3 official under Mr. Tenet, was dismissed in September by Mr. Goss. As deputy director for operations, Mr. Kappes had been in charge of the agency's spying and other covert operations worldwide. He is a former marine who spent more than 20 years at the C.I.A., serving as station chief in Moscow and a Middle Eastern capital. Before assuming the post in August, when he succeeded James L. Pavitt, Mr. Kappes was Mr. Pavitt's principal deputy. Mr. Sulick had been associate deputy for counterintelligence under Mr. Pavitt, and moved up to become Mr. Kappes's principal deputy. In an interview, Ms. Harman, the Congressional Democrat, said that she believed Mr. Goss had placed too much authority in a small cadre of former House Republican aides, including Mr. Murray, whom the new intelligence chief has installed as senior advisers. "I don't begrudge him the right to make changes,'' Ms. Harman said. "I don't begrudge him the right to bring some of his own people to the agency. What I'm criticizing is that he has an all-new management team that has a reputation as partisan and inexperienced, and it is clearly generating an enormous reaction that is not beneficial to the agency and to the war on terrorism.'' [Or maybe the cadre is taking orders from a higher Master?-- and one not friendly to the people of the United States of America?] Senator Bob Graham of Florida, a Democrat who is close to Mr. Goss, said in a separate interview that Mr. Goss was "driven by the right motivations'' in overhauling the agency's top management. "There are lots of problems within the intelligence agencies, and those are not going to be solved by papering them over and without taking the bold steps necessary.'' But Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, issued a statement that called on Mr. Goss to "take immediate steps to stabilize the situation at the C.I.A.'' "There is no doubt that changes needed to take place at the C.I.A., and people should be held accountable for past failures,'' Mr. Rockefeller said in the statement. "However, the departure of highly respected and competent individuals at such a crucial time is a grave concern.'' He added: "The C.I.A. workforce must understand where he is taking the agency and why, and he must provide some explanation for this rash of departures among senior officials."www.nytimes.com/2004/11/16/politics/16intel.html?th=&oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=
|
|
|
Post by Moses on Nov 17, 2004 13:37:36 GMT -5
www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20041117-123335-5881rThe Washington Times www.washingtontimes.com------------------------------------------------------------------------ Pentagon cheers CIA shake-up By Rowan Scarborough THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published November 17, 2004 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The ongoing shake-up at the CIA is a welcome development for senior Pentagon officials that promises to end the agency's below-the-radar opposition to some aspects of President Bush's war on terrorism. Defense Department sources privately complained that parts of the CIA's entrenched bureaucracy of analysts opposed the military's large role in a war against al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. Before the September 11 attacks, the CIA had the lead in hunting al Qaeda. Afterward, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld took over that role and put the military on a terrorist-hunting mission that trespassed on some CIA roles. "Let's just say that a lot of folks over there were still committed to a pre-9/11 way of doing things," said a Pentagon adviser who has played a significant role in forming counterterror policy. "It still hasn't changed." The adviser added: "They did not want to combine capabilities within the CIA that could improve their analysis and operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere." A former senior Pentagon policy-maker said that in discussions with the CIA some analysts left the impression they still did not realize al Qaeda's growing threat. "The feeling in the Pentagon was we had been saying for some time that these guys were dangerous and we didn't get any backing from the CIA," said the former official, who asked not to be named because he still does business with the Bush administration. "They had neglected the operational decision that they needed to go after these terrorists. If they saw terrorism as a threat, they ... sure didn't act as if they had to respond to it." Defense officials said that while Mr. Rumsfeld and former CIA director George J. Tenet maintained a good working relationship, contacts between Pentagon policy-makers and CIA rank-and-file analysts were often testy. They say analysts expressed opposition to going to war with Iraq and filed overly pessimistic reports that seemed to always leak to the liberal press. One senior official told The Washington Times last year of an Iraq station chief's dire predictions on Iraq. The station chief's report leaked to the press within days of its arrival in Washington. What seemed odd to this Pentagon official was that the dispatch contained a long list of "CCs" all the way down to Navy battle group commanders at sea, meaning tens of thousands saw the report. "This report was designed to leak," the official charged. Today, the CIA's Langley headquarters is in the throes of a major shake-up. New agency director Porter J. Goss, a former Republican congressman and CIA officer, has seen three top officials -- deputy director John McLaughlin and two top clandestine officers -- abruptly resign in the past week. Mr. Goss, who chaired the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, publicly has criticized the CIA for a lackluster operations branch that has failed to recruit agents who can penetrate Islamist groups. Critics say Mr. Goss needs to change the culture at Langley. "We were unable to recruit agents in the Middle East, so we had to rely on other countries' agencies," said the former Pentagon official who read the intelligence take. "We ought to rely on our own people, not just the intelligence of other countries. You don't really have a picture of where it's coming from." This source said many reports on terrorists come from the intelligence services of Egypt, Jordan and Israel. Pentagon officials said Mr. Rumsfeld was not always happy with the CIA's performance in the field. In response, he has worked to give U.S. Special Operations Command authority to collect its own intelligence on which commandos can act in hours or days to kill or capture terrorists. Officials said Mr. Rumsfeld believed CIA paramilitary officers were too slow to prepare the battle space in the fall of 2001 before the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and ousted the Taliban. In fact, the CIA's paramilitary force was so poorly staffed, they said the Pentagon was forced to transfer scores of active duty special operations personnel to the CIA to fill out the army. Mr. Rumsfeld signed a secret order to the Joint Chiefs and U.S. Special Operations Command in July 2002 authorizing commandos to perform some spying activities. Since then, SoCom has increased intelligence training for Green Berets at Fort Bragg, N.C., and Fort Lewis, Wash. A joint Senate-House Intelligence Committee report in 2002 disclosed that the CIA was never able to have a spy inside senior al Qaeda circles. "Former [Counter-Terrorism Center] officers told the joint inquiry that before September 11 the CIA had no penetration of al Qaeda leadership, and the agency never got actionable intelligence," said the panel's report. Meanwhile, some in the Pentagon are amused at complaints coming from the CIA about the rough treatment they are getting from Mr. Goss' imported personal staff. A defense intelligence official said: "The CIA operations directorate should stop whining. If they can't stand up to a group of Hill staffers, how can they be expected to stand up to al Qaeda?"
|
|
|
Post by Moses on Nov 18, 2004 10:59:30 GMT -5
The Government of the United States is being consolidated and put under the personal control of a small cabal loyal to a foreign power: After day of cabinet resignations, many fear a shift to the rightBy Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay Knight Ridder NewspapersWASHINGTON - Secretary of State Colin Powell's resignation and a flood of high-level departures at the State Department and CIA remove the cautionary voices that had often acted as a brake on President Bush's aggressive foreign policy. U.S. officials and foreign policy analysts said Monday that by agreeing to Powell's departure and approving a purge by new CIA chief Porter Goss, Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney appear to be eliminating the few independent centers of power in the U.S. national security apparatus and cementing the system under their personal control. Powell and his State Department team - quietly backed by the intelligence community - argued often for a foreign policy that was more inclusive of allies and that relied on diplomacy and coercion rather than on force to deal with adversaries. They lost more battles than they won. Powell, who friends said had hoped to stay on a little longer, will be replaced at the State Department by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, said a senior administration official. Rice is far closer personally to Bush. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, a major architect of the Iraq war along with Bush and Cheney, appears to be staying for now, signaling that the White House believes its much-criticized Iraq policies are on the right track. "Letting him go would be an admission of failure," said one senior administration official who, like others, requested anonymity because of the White House's distaste for dissent. "Now," the official said, "they've got no one left to blame but themselves if things don't go right." "We are seeing the consummation of the revolution," said Ivo Daalder, a scholar at the Washington-based Brookings Institution and author of a book on Bush's foreign policy. "Anybody who thought that a `Bush 2' foreign policy would be a more moderate, multilateral, (John) Kerry-like foreign policy just doesn't understand this president, or this election," Daalder said. Powell's resignation was the most prominent of a string of resignations that were announced or are in the works. At the CIA Monday morning, Goss announced the resignations of Deputy Director for Operations Stephen Kappes, who heads the clandestine service, and his deputy Michael Sulick. Both had clashed with Goss over suggestions that CIA counterintelligence officers should investigate leaks to the media, intelligence officials said. Goss, a former Republican congressman from Florida, and a team of four aides he brought from the House Intelligence Committee, have begun a post-election purge of the Operations Directorate that's infuriated and alarmed current and former U.S. intelligence officials. Many officials believe that the CIA, particularly the DO, as the Operations Directorate is known, is in dire need of reform. The agency was largely unable to penetrate either al-Qaida or Saddam Hussein's Iraqi regime and critics charge that it's become too risk-averse and bureaucratic. But, they said, the way Goss and his aides have proceeded has caused turmoil during heightened intelligence-gathering challenges. It smacks of partisanship and retaliation for the agency's production of analysis that doesn't support White House policy, they said. "There is no doubt that changes needed to take place at the CIA, and people should be held accountable for past failures," Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. "However, the departure of highly respected and competent individuals at such a crucial time is a grave concern." "Goss must take immediate steps to stabilize the situation at the CIA," he said. " What Goss has done with his four minions is just appalling because it strikes at the heart of morale, which was not good to begin with," said Stanley Bedlington, a counterterrorism expert who spent 17 years at the CIA. " To upset the intelligence machine to the extent that it has been upset is the height of foolishness." Others said that the CIA is in need of shock therapy. "The more turmoil, the better. The place is dysfunctional," said one former CIA officer, who requested anonymity. "I'm not too sure there is a right way (to institute change). You are going into a hornets' nest." Goss said Kappes and Sulick "honorably served their nation and this agency with distinction for many years." "There will be no gap in our operations fighting the global war on terror, nor in any of our other vital activities," Goss added. He said he asked the current head of the Counterterrorist Center to take Kappes' place. Knight Ridder is withholding his name because he was a covert operative. [Said to be former Station Chief, Latin America, who was reprimanded in '97 for using his office to protect a friend involved in drug trafficking] Three senior administration officials charged that Goss and his aides are carrying out a "White House-directed purge." One said it appears to be directed at "everybody who said there was no connection between Iraq and al-Qaida and everybody who they think leaked information that undercut what the administration was claiming." Many intelligence and other officials questioned the administration's claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaida, claims that subsequent investigations have found to be erroneous. They also challenged White House assessments about political and economic progress in Iraq. Cheney, they said, was particularly angered by reports, first carried by Knight Ridder, that the CIA had been unable to find any conclusive evidence tying Saddam's regime to Jordanian-born terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi. Cheney had ordered the CIA to take another look at possible links among Saddam, Zarqawi and Osama bin Laden, the official said, and was angered when a CIA briefer told him the results of the inquiry. "This is a classic case of shooting the messenger," said one senior official. "Unfortunately, they're the same messengers we're counting on to warn us of the next al-Qaida attack." At the State Department, officials said, Powell is expected to be accompanied out the door by virtually his entire management team: Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage; Undersecretary for Political Affairs Marc Grossman, the department's No. 3 official; Undersecretary for Management Grant Green; and several others. "They're going to purge the State Department," said one of the senior officials, adding that he'd heard White House officials say: "The State Department doesn't get it. They're not on the president's message." Powell will be sorely missed among career employees, not so much for his policy successes, but because he made personnel a priority and used his political clout to wrest much-needed funds and hiring authority from Congress. Powell imbued "a sense of self-worth that's a rare commodity for the civil service and the foreign service that works here," a mid-level official said. "It hasn't sunk into folks around here that we're about to lose our lord and protector." www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/10190336.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp
|
|
|
Post by Moses on Nov 18, 2004 12:42:32 GMT -5
From Hawk/military reporter Fred Kaplan Cooking With Goss The new CIA chief's shakeups are bad news.By Fred Kaplan Posted Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2004, at 2:42 PM PT slate.msn.com/id/2109870/ ....The more important question is what Goss will do with the agency's analytical branch, the directorate of intelligence. That's the branch where integrity and independence are vital. That's where the Bush administration's prime movers—Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld—stuck their fingers in the run-up to the war in Iraq, pressuring analysts to drop the maybes and on-the-other-hands from their reports about Saddam's possible possession of weapons of mass destruction and connections to al-Qaida. The personnel shufflings haven't yet spread to the analytical shop. But signs are starting to point to a broad shake-up, charged by political motivations. And it's in this context that Goss' actions take on a darker tint. Today's New York Times, in a story headlined "New C.I.A. Chief Tells Workers to Back Administration Policies," reports on a leaked memo that Goss circulated on Monday within the CIA "to clarify beyond doubt the rules of the road," as the new director put it. The pertinent passage is this: "As agency employees we do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies." This directive reinforces a general uneasiness about Goss, who after all auditioned for his current job by doing political hackwork for the president. In June 2003, when Sen. Kerry—who was clearly running for president already—gave "a major speech" on national-security issues, the Bush-Cheney campaign tapped Goss to write the official critique. And he wrote a blazer, denouncing the speech as "political 'me-tooism' " and complaining that Kerry "neglected the president's historic achievements" and "remarkable progress" at combating terrorism. Goss also helped Bush during the early days of the Joseph Wilson-Valerie Plame scandal. As chairman of a House oversight committee and as a former CIA case officer himself, Goss should have been dismayed that a White House aide might have exposed the identity of an undercover agent as an act of political retaliation against the agent's spouse. But, although the Justice Department took the reports seriously enough to mount a grand-jury probe, Goss dismissed them as "wild and unsubstantiated" and added, as a jab at the Democrats, "Somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA, I'll have an investigation." It was because of such incidents, among others, that John D. Rockefeller IV, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, confided to aides last August—after Bush named Goss to be CIA director—that Goss was "too political" for the job. This background to Goss' appointment is what lends credence to the warning cries from the pros of Langley. Ordinarily, such cries might be suspect. Ensconced bureaucrats always panic when an outsider roars into the sanctuary, espousing radical change. When Robert McNamara took over the Pentagon in 1961 and started cutting weapons programs that didn't pass his cost-benefit analyses, the uniformed military went berserk. Just as Goss brought along some arrogant young staffers from the House, McNamara brought in some arrogant young "whiz kids" from the RAND Corporation. Alain Enthoven, the 29-year-old whom McNamara made the assistant secretary of defense for systems analysis (a job that hadn't existed before), told one senior Air Force officer who started lecturing him on a fine point, "General, I don't think you understand. I didn't come for a briefing. I came to tell you what we have decided." To another, who started to argue with Enthoven about nuclear-war plans, he said, "General, I have fought just as many nuclear wars as you have." McNamara and Enthoven turned out to be right. The military services had been wildly extravagant about the way they'd been buying weapons. Maybe Goss and his whippersnappers will turn out to be right on whatever it is they're trying to do, too. But there's a big difference. McNamara and his whiz kids didn't work in John F. Kennedy's election campaign. They'd never publicly lashed out against JFK's opponent, Richard Nixon, or made snide comments about his predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower. They weren't political people. President Bush's second-term Cabinet is shaping up to be not a collection of separate agencies but a political arm of the Oval Office. Bush's appointments so far—Alberto Gonzalez at Justice, Condoleezza Rice at State, and today Margaret Spellings at Education—all come from his White House staff. This is a legitimate, if narrowly confining, style of leadership. But the CIA is different: Its success depends above all on whether its director can provide the president with disinterested analysis. So far, Porter Goss does not seem to be such a director. Fred Kaplan writes the "War Stories" column for Slate. Photograph of Porter Goss by Mannie Garcia /Reuters.
|
|
|
Post by Moses on Nov 18, 2004 14:04:03 GMT -5
White House pressure on CIA under scrutiny The World Today - Thursday, 18 November , 2004 12:30:00 Reporter: Eleanor Hall ELEANOR HALL: To the United States now, where the nation's top spy agency has hit the headlines again this week, with accusations the agency is being leant on by the White House. The US Central Intelligence Agency has been the focus of criticism and the subject of political inquiries ever since the September 11 attacks. The failure of intelligence on Iraq only added to the concerns about the agency's competence and prompted the resignation last year of CIA director, George Tenet. But tensions appear to be boiling over under the new CIA boss, Porter Goss. Recently the White House complained about leaks from the CIA. On Monday two top CIA officers, including the Deputy Director of Operations, resigned. And today The New York Times has published extracts from an internal memorandum from Mr Goss which states that the job of CIA officers is "to support the administration and its policies." So just what is going on inside the United States key intelligence organisation? A short time ago, I spoke to a former CIA officer who worked in the counter-terrorism unit for almost two decades. Philip Giraldi left the CIA 12 years ago and now advises US corporations on security issues. He has been critical of the CIA's performance in recent years, but says the big concern now is the direction the organisation seems to be set to take over the next four years. PHILIP GIRALDI: Well, I think the memorandum suggests that the current Bush… well, the second Bush administration, will make an effort to politically control the CIA, and possibly even politicise it. ELEANOR HALL: Is Mr Goss, though, not simply trying to stop leaks from his organisation? PHILIP GIRALDI: Well, he's definitely trying to stop leaks, but the whole issue of stopping leaks really comes down to controlling politically what goes on at the agency. I think everyone would agree that an intelligence organisation has a right to stop leaks of classified information, but what's disturbing about Mr Goss is that he has been pretty much up front in saying that all CIA employees have to support the administration and the administration's policies, which is quite a different thing than stopping leaks. ELEANOR HALL: What was your reaction when you read that in the paper this morning? PHILIP GIRALDI: I was astonished. I thought that the… I have been talking to people at CIA, and they've been basically telling me that what they perceive as happening is something akin to a purge. But I was quite surprised at the lack of subtlety in going to CIA employees and saying that they were obligated to support policies. Now, that means that whether the policy is right or wrong, they would be presumably obligated to support it. ELEANOR HALL: Have you been aware of tension between the White House and the CIA? PHILIP GIRALDI: Yeah. This has been pretty much a problem over the last six months, where many people in the CIA felt that they had been victimised by the White House and also by Congress, and blamed for most, or indeed in some cases, all of the failings that led up to the Iraq war and also 9/11. And many people felt that this criticism was unfair, and that the CIA basically operates in a political environment, and to say that the Congress and the White House were not responsible for things that happen but the intelligence agency was, is perceived as being a bit unfair. ELEANOR HALL: I guess morale has been a problem for some time. You would say that it's getting better or worse under the new director, though? PHILIP GIRALDI: Oh, it's definitely gotten much worse. Definitely gotten much worse. ELEANOR HALL: And you talk about the political pressure being a problem. Can you give us an example of how that could be a problem of a severe kind? PHILIP GIRALDI: Sure. The simple example would be that if, for example, as occurred in the lead-up to the Iraq war, the Vice-President goes over to the CIA headquarters and is in a room with three or four analysts who are probably what would be mid-level bureaucrats, and he basically listens to what they have to say, and then tells them, no, that's not correct, that's not what I want to hear, the analysts get the message that basically, the product has to be changed to suit the politicians. So this is the danger of that kind of pressure, where you have a product that makes the politicians happy but it turns out not to be true. ELEANOR HALL: And in terms of foreign policy, what would that mean? PHILIP GIRALDI: Well, it could be disastrous. I mean, if you make an assessment… look, for example, at what's probably coming up now, which is the Government is clearly making serious assessments about Iran and Iran's capability to develop weapons of mass destruction. If they make the wrong judgment, and we wind up in a war, a war with Iran which is twice as big as Iraq and has a much bigger military and so on and so forth, it could be far more catastrophic than the situation in Iraq. ELEANOR HALL: Former CIA counter-terrorism officer, Philip Giraldi, who now advises US corporations on security issues, speaking to me from Washington. www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2004/s1246383.htm
|
|
|
Post by Moses on Nov 18, 2004 21:23:35 GMT -5
Partisan Spooks The Los Angeles Times Thursday 18 November 2004 It was always clear that Porter J. Goss, who bungled oversight as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, was a questionable choice to run the CIA. But the turmoil that Goss, who assumed his new post in late September, has thrown the agency into shows that he isn't as bad as many feared. He may even be worse. It began Monday with the abrupt resignations of two senior CIA officials - both with long experience in the clandestine service - who Goss' aides needlessly antagonized. Now Goss has piled on with a new memorandum, circulated late Monday, suggesting that CIA employees "support the administration and its policies in our work." This statement is chillingly off-base. The mission of the CIA is not to support any one administration's policies. Its mandate is to provide the president with objective intelligence and to remain aloof from policy recommendations. For Goss to imply otherwise is to pervert the CIA's mission. The danger is that by politicizing the intelligence process, Goss could not only further undermine the agency's morale and professionalism, but the nation's security itself. Unfortunately, Goss' partisan record leads us to read his memo in the worst possible light. As a congressman, Goss ran interference for the White House whenever he could. As head of the intelligence panel, Goss and his aides, in contrast to the Senate, failed to release a bipartisan report on prewar Iraq intelligence. Goss opposed the creation of an independent commission to study the 9/11 disaster. And he savagely and falsely denounced Sen. John F. Kerry during the presidential campaign for trying to starve the intelligence agencies of funding. Now Goss and his assistants are at it again. It's true that the CIA's directorate of operations, or covert arm, has a long history of resisting any reforms, whether it was under President Carter's director, Adm. Stansfield Turner, or President Clinton's director, John M. Deutsch. But there is no conceivable way that Goss' call for fealty to the president are going to improve the CIA's deficiencies. Instead, they will aggravate them. Even as Congress lurches toward an intelligence reform bill, Goss' installation at the CIA offers a reminder that it isn't where the bureaucratic boxes are situated that really matters, it's the officials who occupy them. If President Bush really wants reliable intelligence, he would tell Goss to back off. Unless, of course, the reason that he appointed Goss in the first place is that he covets a docile and politicized CIA, which is what he is about to get. www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-ed-cia18nov18,1,2061780.story
|
|
|
Post by Moses on Nov 18, 2004 22:49:19 GMT -5
So those people who handed out bunk about the CIA operations not infiltrating Qaeda don't know what they are talking about. Clearly, the CIA could not have publicized anything except that they had not infiltrated Qaeda, for obvious reasons. It would be interesting to go back and see who was full of sh*t. (Slater, for one). CIA infiltrated Qaeda before 9/11: ex-counter spyThu Nov 18, 7:38 PM ET Politics - AFP WASHINGTON (AFP) - The CIA (news - web sites) had infiltrated Al-Qaeda before the September 11 attacks, but at levels too low to know of the plot, according to former White House counter-terrorism chief Richard Clarke. Clarke said that in 1999, former CIA director George Tenet ordered spies to penetrate Al-Qaeda for information on its leader, Osama bin Laden . "Over the course of the subsequent three years they did go form (censored) penetrations of one sort or another, none of them very high level," Clark told members of Congress in June 2002 during closed-door testimony whose censored transcript was released this week. "We could not conduct those military strikes to kill bin Laden, because we never knew where he was going to be in advance. "And usually we were only informed about where he was after the fact." Before the 2001 attacks, bin Laden had bombed two US embassies in Africa, the USS Cole in Yemen and other targets. "By 1997 and 1998, they were operating an Afghan cell inside Afghanistan (news - web sites) to surveil bin Laden to provide information of where he was, so that we could perhaps snatch him," Clarke said. "Their information was never timely." Clarke was a member of the National Security Council, which advises the president. He caused waves earlier this year by saying the Bush administration missed cues that could have prevented the 2001 attacks, which killed 3,000 people. In August, 1998, the United States was advised several days in anticipation of bin Laden's location and launched missiles at his camp, in reprisal for the embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salam. "We have reports that he had just left the camp before the missiles hit ... within the hour," Clarke said. story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1520&e=1&u=/afp/20041119/pl_afp/us_attacks_qaeda_cia_041119003848
|
|
|
Post by Moses on Nov 25, 2004 7:28:28 GMT -5
November 25, 20042 Top Officials Are Reported to Quit C.I.A. By DOUGLAS JEHL WASHINGTON, Nov. 24 - Two more senior officials of the Central Intelligence Agency's clandestine service are stepping down, intelligence officials said Wednesday, in the latest sign of upheaval in the agency under its new chief, Porter J. Goss. As the chiefs of the Europe and Far East divisions, the two officials have headed spying operations in some of the most important regions of the world and were among a group known as the barons in the highest level of clandestine service, the Directorate of Operations. The directorate has been the main target of an overhaul effort by Mr. Goss and his staff. Its chief, Stephen R. Kappes, and his deputy resigned this month after a dispute with the new management team. An intelligence official said that the two division chiefs were retiring from the agency and that there would be no public announcement. Neither could be named, the official said, because they are working under cover. A former intelligence official described the two as "very senior guys" who were stepping down because they did not feel comfortable with new management. In a memorandum to agency employees last week, Mr. Goss warned that more personnel changes were coming as part of what he described as an effort to rebuild the ability of the agency to perform its core mission of stealing secrets. Last week, President Bush directed Mr. Goss to draw up detailed plans in 90 days for a major overhaul of the agency, to address shortcomings that have become evident with intelligence failures related to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and prewar assessments of Iraq. The directive included a call for 50 percent increases in crucial operations and analytical personnel, a goal that the agency had already set in a five-year strategic plan drafted in December under George J. Tenet, the previous director of central intelligence. Many of the agency's top officials, including John E. McLaughlin, the deputy director, and A. B. Krongard, the No. 3 official, have stepped down or announced plans to do so since Mr. Goss took office in September. The upheaval has been most extensive in the operations directorate, made up of spies and spymasters who have made careers out of stealing secrets. The clandestine service is a proud closed fraternity and one that sees itself as fiercely loyal and not risk-averse. It is also a group that has recoiled in recent weeks at the criticisms leveled at the agency, including comments this month from Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, who accused the agency of acting "almost as a rogue" institution. Mr. Goss is a former spy and a member of the clandestine service who worked in Latin America in the 60's. More recently, he was a Republican congressman and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and he has made plain his view that the current crop of case officers is not bold enough. What is playing out in the agency headquarters is no less than a clash of cultures on a scale not seen there. since the Carter administration, when Stansfield Turner, a retired admiral, took a half-dozen Navy officers with him to the agency in 1977. Under Mr. Goss, it is a cadre of former House Republican aides, not Navy officers, who dominate the new management team. This month, they have toppled Mr. Kappes and his deputy, Michael Sulick, in a way that former intelligence officials say has shown little regard for the tradition-bound clandestine service which has always prized rank, experience and lines of authority. "The C.I.A. is a line organization like the military," said Christopher Mellon, a former intelligence official at the Defense Department and the Senate Intelligence Committee. "When staff guys insert themselves, that causes confusion and discontent." Under Mr. Goss, the extent of the rebellion in the ranks is not clear. Much of the anger has been focused on a former Congressional aide, Patrick Murray, the chief of staff, who is said to have raised the hackles of some station chiefs around the world. The atmosphere has so deteriorated in the agency that some career officers have begun using derogatory nicknames for Mr. Murray and his colleagues, former intelligence officials said. A backdrop to the tensions have been accusations from some Republicans that the agency sought over the summer to undermine Mr. Bush's re-election. Mr. McCain, in suggesting that the agency had been disloyal, has singled out the disclosure of intelligence reports about Iraq whose conclusions were at odds with administration assertions about the war. In a rare public rebuttal, John E. McLaughlin, a career C.I.A. official who is stepping down as the agency's No. 2 official after less than two months as Mr. Goss's deputy, wrote in an op-ed article on Tuesday in The Washington Post that the accusation was unjustified. "C.I.A. officers are career professionals who work for the president," Mr. McLaughlin wrote. "They see this as a solemn duty, regardless of which party holds the White House. Has everyone ruled out the possibility that the intelligence community during this period was simply doing its job - calling things as it saw them - and that people with a wide array of motives found it advantageous to put out this material when the C.I.A.'s views seemed at odds with the administration's?" Still, the memorandum that Mr. Goss issued last week advised his employees that the agency's job was to "support the administration and its policies" and to do nothing to associate themselves with opposition to the administration. People close to Mr. Goss and Mr. Murray, 40, say the two believe that major shakeups are needed. "What's going on at the agency now is very clearly a group of deskbound bureaucrats who don't want the system to change," said Gardiner Peckham, a longtime friend of Mr. Murray and, like him, a former Republican Congressional official. "Basically, they're looking at a president, a director and his chief of staff who are change agents. There are some who would like to stand in the way and prevent that change from taking place, and they shouldn't win." Mr. Turner, as intelligence chief under President Jimmy Carter, had an agenda that was the opposite in many ways from Mr. Goss's. He sought to shrink the clandestine service and rein it in, in reaction to the abuses of the 60's and 70's. Mr. Goss wants to make it bigger and bolder, in response to failures in connection with the Sept. 11 attacks and in prewar intelligence on Iraq. In a telephone interview, Mr. Turner said he recognized the challenge that Mr. Goss was facing. "Criticize the D.O., and you're in trouble," Mr. Turner said, using an abbreviation for the operations directorate. "Try to modify the way that operation works, and if you're an outsider, you're in trouble." Mr. Goss and his team, including Mr. Murray, have never made a secret of their view that the clandestine service was in need of major change. A report by the House Intelligence Committee issued in June, when Mr. Goss was its chairman and Mr. Murray its staff director, portrayed the operations directorate in scathing terms, disparaging what it called "a continued political aversion to operations risk" and calling for "immediate and far-reaching changes." "The nimble, flexible, core-mission oriented enterprise the D.O. once was, is becoming just a fleeting memory," the report said. "With each passing day, it becomes harder to resurrect." The report so infuriated the agency that Mr. Tenet, who was still director of central intelligence, shot off an angry letter to Mr. Goss. To replace Mr. Kappes, Mr. Goss has appointed a career covert officer whose name has not been announced because he is undercover but who has been most recently director of the Counterterrorism Center at the agency. [Former Latin American Station Chief who used his position to protect a friend involved in drug trafficing in DR] An agency spokesman declined to comment on the internal dispute. www.nytimes.com/2004/11/25/politics/25intel.html?th=&oref=login&pagewanted=print&position=
|
|
|
Post by Moses on Nov 25, 2004 7:30:33 GMT -5
Clearly Goss et al are ignoring congressional concerns and direction that he stabilize this situtation at the CIA. Where is the congressional oversight?
|
|
|
Post by Moses on Nov 25, 2004 7:44:05 GMT -5
Is that fat nebbish that strikingly resembles livestock-- of the kind that can be made into yummy bacon-- behind Goss Patrick Murray? And is that mean little rodenty guy the other staffer that Goss brought with him? Jakob or Jacob or something?
|
|
|
Post by Moses on Nov 25, 2004 13:44:39 GMT -5
Official: 2 Overseas CIA Chiefs Stepping Down Goss Aides Reportedly Alienating Longtime Officials POSTED: 11:30 pm EST November 24, 2004 WASHINGTON -- The exodus continues at the nation's spy agency. A federal official has confirmed for The Associated Press that two overseas CIA chiefs are retiring. They're the latest departures for an agency tossed into turmoil when former Congressman Porter Goss took over. The resignations come nearly two weeks after two other top officials announced they were leaving. The agency's No. 2 man also retired earlier this month. The two retiring chiefs head the European and Far Eastern divisions. The New York Times reports on its Web site that they're in the agency's highest level of spy service. Former officials have been describing a very tense atmosphere with Goss in charge. Some say Goss' new aides are alienating longtime officials with decades of experience. www.thebostonchannel.com/news/3949515/detail.html
|
|
|
Post by Moses on Jan 5, 2005 23:47:34 GMT -5
Changing of the Guard at the CIA Goss's Shake-Ups Leave Some Questioning Agency's Role By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, January 6, 2005; Page A03 With the departure next month of the CIA's deputy director for intelligence, Jami A. Miscik, CIA Director Porter J. Goss will have largely completed the replacement of top agency officials that his aides had predicted to colleagues when they took control in October. About 20 senior CIA officials have resigned or retired since Goss, the former chairman of the House intelligence committee, left Congress to become director of the agency, bringing with him to Langley four GOP aides from Capitol Hill. Only one member of the leadership team put together by former CIA director George J. Tenet remains -- Donald M. Kerr, deputy director for science and technology. The uproar at CIA headquarters caused by the personnel moves, which some saw as partisan in nature, has died down for now, and the pace of departures has slowed. That is partly because case officers and analysts are waiting to see whether Goss remains at the CIA or moves up to the new position of director of national intelligence (DNI), created last month by legislation aimed at reorganizing the U.S. intelligence system. Meanwhile, officials say Goss has selected John Kringen, a longtime CIA officer, to become Miscik's replacement. The move may signal that Goss has "turned inward" for new appointments, "rather than going outside as once appeared to be the case," a former senior agency official said this week. [huh? Wasn't this promotion already mentioned weeks ago? Isn't Kringen the guy who used is position to halt investigations into the drug trafficing of a friend in DR?] Kringen is head of the CIA's crime and narcotics center, and had served in several geographical areas as a CIA analyst and manager. Goss went outside the CIA for a new public affairs chief, choosing Jennifer Millerwise, who starts Monday. She was deputy communications director of the Bush-Cheney campaign in 2004, for several years before that was press secretary for Vice President Cheney and earlier worked in Goss's office on Capitol Hill. Intelligence officials say Goss and his emerging leadership team [sic] -- including the former Capitol Hill aides -- have not made clear how they intend to change CIA policies and programs. But there may be clues in the work Goss and his aides did last summer on the House Select Committee on Intelligence. The committee's report on the fiscal 2005 intelligence authorization bill included two particularly controversial recommendations for changing the way the CIA does business. The first was to have analysts in the Directorate of Intelligence put less emphasis on writing short, often overnight, spot reports to the president and other policymakers on intelligence. Rather, the report said, analysts should focus on writing longer-range, broader strategic estimates. As the report put it, "Instead of {grv}'chasing CNN,' as the committee has observed in the past, the DI should be devoting much more of its resources to doing the kind of all-source, in-depth analysis that cannot, and is not, being done elsewhere in government or through media outlets." A former senior intelligence official questioned that approach in an interview last week: "The president, who is CIA's primary customer, is more worried about 2005 than he is 2020." If analysts "don't get things like today's threat from terrorism nailed down in the near term," he added, "it won't matter how they look at matters in Russia or China that are five, 10 and 20 years off." Tenet, then CIA director, reorganized the daily morning intelligence report given to President Bush and his top advisers around quick summaries of one or two pages each. They were designed to leave time during the president's regular half-hour Oval Office meeting for discussion or questions about items that caught the president's interest. Goss, who now does the White House morning meeting when the president is in town [he rarely is in town], has not had time to develop the same background on intelligence issues that Tenet brought to those sessions after five years on the job, [Tenet was also staff on Senate Intelligence Committee] and he has not had the same rapport with Bush, administration and intelligence sources said. [It doesn't matter- he is Cheney's mole] Richard J. Kerr, a former deputy CIA director who once ran the DI, said in a recent interview that there is "too much" emphasis on overnight reporting of current intelligence. But he said good analysts could handle both the short- and long-term work. He also recalled that during the Cold War and afterward, intelligence collection, primarily by technical means such as satellites, would focus for a week on a single strategic problem. That would yield valuable information that analysts could use to shed new light on issues. "We used to 'blitz' a target such as who was developing what missiles years ago and learned a lot we were not previously aware of," Kerr said. The second significant but difficult-to-enact change that the Goss team promoted on Capitol Hill was getting analysts in the Directorate of Intelligence much more involved in recruiting and directing agents as well as choosing targets for intelligence collection. Those decisions have traditionally been made by the CIA's Directorate of Operations (DO), which conducts the agency's spying and collection efforts, and is separate from the DI, where information is analyzed. "Senior DI managers still do not have the ability to drive collection priorities, despite past committee exhortations about the urgency of fixing this problem, and the CIA's own stated goals," the committee report said. With the departure late last year of the DO's two top officials, who left after clashing with the Goss team, the way may be open to get the DI more involved in setting collection priorities. Kerr said that "analysts should be much more involved driving the collection," including decisions about recruitment of sources. "The DO needs to be more intimate with analysts, but good analysts in the past have found a way to worm their way into the [collection] system," he added.
|
|