MOSCOW, (Gennady Yevstafyev for RIA Novosti) -- Porter J. Goss has retired from the post of Director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, which he held for about 18 months. Or rather, he was prodded into retirement.
There are many reasons for that surprise move, and those who offer one or two apparent reasons do not fully understand the essence of the problem.
Goss as CIA Director also held the post of Director of Central Intelligence, DCI, in charge of 16 security services of the United States. He used to say proudly that he wore five hats, referring to the number of his functions.
There is a special conference room for the heads of intelligence divisions in the CIA, where the DCI sits at the top of the table, and each intelligence spokesman has a definite chair, with the emblem of his organization hanging on the wall above.
This is how it was, but the situation changed after the 9/11 tragedy, Iraq and other pitfalls and scandals, such as the CIA's secret prisons, continuous leaks from the security services, for example, about the creation of an extrajudicial system of telephone tapping, or a secret Pentagon campaign of collecting information about U.S. nationals codenamed Operation TALON and officially designed to hunt down and apprehend fugitive felons, many of them violent offenders, by matching them against government records of current and former food stamp recipients.
As a result the Republican caucus decided to overhaul the U.S. secret services, and Goss lost the post of DCI. Moreover, the function of DCI was changed too.
Goss was said to be the nominee of Vice President Dick Cheney, the "gray eminence" of the Republican Administration with whom he had worked together in Congress where he rose to chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in 1997. Goss got down to business, cleansing the CIA at the prodding of ultra conservatives who demanded removing the "Clinton nests" from the agency, referring to the most apparent supporters of the Democratic Party, especially those whose appointment was allegedly encouraged by Hilary Clinton.
Goss did his best, but it apparently was not enough. The fight against terror, although George W. Bush declared it a priority, was not bringing the desired results. The CIA Counterterrorism Center failed in its task, and Iraq had turned into a home base for terrorists. But, as political analyst Ashton B. Carter said in a testimony before presidential commission, "There is no such thing as an 'intelligence failure.' All intelligence failures are coupled to policy failures."
Surprisingly, it transpired at that precise moment that Porter Goss was not Cheney's man, because Cheney favored John D. Negroponte, the "sunny boy" of Conservatives. Negroponte was charged with the most serious reform of the American intelligence community in the last 50 years. He was appointed to a new post, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and instructed to implement the recommendations of the Robb-Silberman commission on weapons of mass destruction.
It was the beginning of the CIA demise, which apparently made happy the other community members.
Next followed the corruption scandal around Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, the number three official at the CIA in charge of agency contracts who was an old pal of Porter Goss and enjoyed his complete trust. The Foggo affair threatens to become a super-scandal that may smear many prominent politicians and businessmen.
Negroponte, who was charged with depriving the CIA of its dominant role in the intelligence community, started morning reports of intelligence information to the president. He had the president's ear, which costs dearly in the U.S. bureaucratic establishment.
When Robert Grenier resigned from the post of chairman of the CIA Counterterrorism Center and accepted a job in Negroponte's National Counterterrorism Center, dozens of analysts followed him and it is said competently that there are enough rooms for several hundred more.
When Goss was the CIA director, he appointed the so-called WMD managers for North Korea and Iran. There are reasons to assume that the center of intelligence operation on WMD is gradually shifting to Negroponte's command.
In early February, most likely unable to stop leaks from the CIA, Porter Goss declared a "battle to protect our classified information." He made his intention known in an article titled "Loose Lips Sink Spies", published by the International Herald Tribune. The time was chosen extremely badly, though he probably did this to spite the White House.
One of the reasons for accusing Saddam Hussein of creating nuclear weapons was the statement widely circulated by the Bush Administration that the Iraqis had bought uranium ore in Niger. At first, the Americans received this information from SISMI, the military intelligence agency of Italy, and were not convinced by it. They decided to check the information confidentially and dispatched former Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger. Subsequent events show that the choice was made in the CIA because Wilson's wife was a deep-cover CIA agent.
Wilson did not do what he was expected to do, reporting that the information was not true. But the anti-Saddam propaganda campaign had been launched by that time, with Dick Cheney as the lead singer and Tony Blair as the backup.
But Ambassador Wilson continued to insist that he was right, even though nobody would listen to him. So, the White House decided to punish him and leaked the information that his wife, Valerie Plame, was a deep-cover CIA operative.
It was a scandal. Under U.S. law, the disclosure of the names of secret CIA agents is a criminal offence. The law was made even harsher in 1998 at the initiative of Congressman Porter Goss (Rep). A prosecutor was appointed and the investigation soon tracked down the source of the leak - Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff.
His interrogation promised to become another Watergate, but Cheney, the unsinkable "grey eminence", survived this storm too. Saving the honor - and possibly the life - of his administration, George Bush said he had ordered Libby to disclose the name of Agent Plame. Lawyers were found who said that the U.S. President was the only person allowed to do this in the supreme interests of national security. The case was pulled back under control and quietly closed.
This is how an end was put to honest investigation and to equality of all U.S. citizens before law. American democracy is dotted with so many lies that one often wonders if there is more truth or lies in it.
This also ended the career of Porter J. Goss, though not the struggle within the American intelligence community. Will the next president leave everything as it is or change something? It's a toss of the coin.
Gennady Yevstafyev is a retired Lieutenant General of Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service and senior adviser with the Center for Policy Studies in Russia (PIR Center).
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and may not necessarily represent the opinions of the editorial board.
