Porter Goss resigns. Why? A roundup. - Democratic Underground

BobcatJH

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Fri May-05-06 04:25 PM
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Porter Goss resigns. Why? A roundup.

If it's Friday, it's time for an end-of-the-news-cycle embarrassing-to-the-administration story dump. Today is no different, as CIA chief Porter Goss resigned, suddenly and without warning. From the Washington Post:

CIA Director Porter J. Goss resigned today after less than two years on the job, President Bush announced at the White House.

Bush said Goss offered his resignation this morning and that "I've accepted it."

Neither the president nor Goss, who sat to Bush's right as he made the announcement in the Oval Office, gave a reason for the resignation.

While no official reason has been given, the common media narrative is that Goss is the latest victim of the West Wing "shake-up" and that he ran into friction within the agency. What isn't being said, however, is that there may be an altogether different reason for his sudden departure. As Josh Marshall notes:

Here at TPM HQ we were listening to the president's announcement. And the talking heads on CNN were speculating whether Goss's departure might be part of Josh Bolten's 'new blood' shake up in the Bush administration. I don't suppose it has anything to do with the fact that Goss is neck deep in the Wilkes-Corruption-and-Hookers story that's been burbling in the background all week. We don't know definitely why Goss pulled the plug yet. But the CIA Director doesn't march over to the White House and resign, effective immediately, unless something very big is up.

"Say what?" you ask. Yep. Hookers. Allow Think Progress to catch us all up:

For more than a decade, Cunningham-linked defense contractor Brent Wilkes curried favor with lawmakers and CIA officials by hosting weekly parties at lavish hospitality suites at the Watergate and Westin hotels in Washington. Guests would gamble, socialize, and sometimes receive prostitutes; according to Harper's magazine, the festivities "began early with poker games and degenerated" into what one source described "as a 'frat party' scene - real bacchanals."

GOSS' NO. 3 ADMITS ATTENDING PARTIES: The highest-ranking CIA official to admit he attended the poker parties thrown by Wilkes is Executive Director Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, the agency's third-ranking official. (Foggo even "occasionally hosted the poker parties at his house in northern Virginia," though he denies ever seeing prostitutes at the gatherings.) Foggo's connections to Wilkes and fellow contractor Mitchell Wade are now the focus of an investigation into CIA contracts by the agency's inspector general, first made public in March. One of Wilkes' companies, Archer Logistics, won a contract to provide supplies to CIA agents in Afghanistan and Iraq despite having "no previous experience with such work, having been founded a few months before the contract was granted."

GOSS CONNECTED? Last week, Harper's magazine reported that party-goers "under intense scrutiny by the FBI are current and former lawmakers on Defense and Intelligence committees - including one person who now holds a powerful intelligence post." CIA Director Porter Goss is perhaps the only individual who fits such a description. (Goss denied the accusations through a spokesperson.) But the alleged links between Goss, Foggo, and Wilkes led some to return to questions raised when Goss initially selected Foggo to be executive director in November 2004. At the time, the decision was viewed with skepticism since Foggo's previous position was as a "midlevel procurement supervisor," and because following his unexpected selection, "Porter Goss lieutenant Patrick Murray went to then-Associate Deputy Director of Operations for Counterintelligence Mary Margaret Graham and informed her that if anything leaked about other Goss appointments - in particular, Foggo's - she would be held responsible."

Project on Government Oversight fellow Jason Vest reported last week that much of Foggo's counterintelligence file "has to do with various social encounters over the years, none of which he's been deceptive about when polygraphed, and all of which have been deemed to be of no threat to operational security - but are still the types of things that could be embarrassing for Goss and the Agency." Vest suggests the latest reports raise important questions about the "relationship between Foggo and Wilkes, and the relationship of each with Goss."

First to allude to the exploding scandal on cable news was former Republican Rep. Bob Barr. "We've seen brewing out of the congressman Duke Cunningham scandal, probably now for several months," Barr told a CNN reporter. "It's starting to reach into the CIA and that come very ... well ... like a sore that's been festering, that could very well burst out and maybe that's a reach into the top levels of the agency."

Adding fuel to the fire is the CNN report from Pentagon correspondent Jamie McIntyre, who said:

In fact, Porter Goss was apparently supposed to attend a regularly scheduled afternoon meeting that takes place right about this time in the afternoon. The Defense Department has representatives there and, according to sources, none of the people at that meeting had any advance word that Porter Goss was going to be tendering his resignation.

So it indicates the sudden nature that this took place, and again it just fuels the speculation of what the real backstory is here. And again, nobody here seems to know. They are all all just really surprised, they had no idea this was coming. And they're really just wondering what was actually behind it.

Even Bush apologist William Kristol speculated on Fox News that the abrupt resignation came as the result of "something that popped this week." MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell went a step further, discussing the possible connection between Goss and the Cunningham scandal.

Taking another tack altogether, however, may lead this story to, of all places, Iran. And that possibility adds a deeper level of intrigue to the story, which is only beginning. So, while the servile Washington media largely avoid the true depths of Goss's sudden resignation, ask yourself the question journalists should be asking: Why?

Have you been hearing anything? If so, please add to the info dump below! Thanks.