John Negroponte and the downfall of Porter Goss

[Jack Rabbit]

Most of the talk about the sudden downfall of Porter Goss as director of the CIA yesterday afternoon has centered around the tantalizing story of Goss' alleged involvement in an emerging congressional scandal involving lobbyists procuring prostitutes for members of the House Intelligence Committee and some CIA bigwigs at the Watergate in Washington.

We could be following the wrong scent. Some of the talk elsewhere since last night has centered around the idea that Goss lost a power struggle with John Negroponte. Negroponte is said to have complained that Goss is not a "team player."

Goss? Not a team player? A political hack like Goss is nothing if he is not a team player. My guess is he was playing for the wrong team.

The following report, which appeared Monday on TomPaine.com, is very interesting:

Iran Intelligence War
By Robert Parry

In a replay of the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction charade, neoconservative supporters of George W. Bush are pushing the U.S. intelligence community to take a more alarmist view about Iran's nuclear program—only this time, the nation's top spy John Negroponte is resisting the pressure unlike former CIA chief George Tenet.

Tenet joined in Bush's hyping of the WMD evidence about Iraq—famously telling the President that the case was a "slam dunk." But Negroponte is defying hardliners who want a worst-case scenario on Iran's capabilities. Instead, he is citing Iran's limited progress in refining uranium and their use of a cascade of only 164 centrifuges.

"According to the experts that I consult, achieving—getting 164 centrifuges to work is still a long way from having the capacity to manufacture sufficient fissile material for a nuclear weapon," Negroponte said in an interview with NBC News on April 20.

"Our assessment is that the prospects of an Iranian weapon are still a number of years off, and probably into the next decade," said Negroponte, who was appointed last year as the Director of National Intelligence, a new post that supplanted the traditional primacy of the CIA director as the head of the U.S. intelligence community.

Read more at the link. While the rest of the Bushies are playing the same game in Iran as they did in Iraq and expect lies and distortions to work a second time, Negroponte is saying something else. One might conclude that it is Negroponte who is not the team player.

It's not Bush's team any more. Goss thought it was, but he found out too late that he was on Negroponte's team.

First, let's consider what Goss was supposed to do at the CIA, and did to some extent. He was supposed to weed out people who were "disloyal" to Bush. What that means is that Bush and Cheney didn't want analysts around who would tell them anything other than what they want to hear, regardless of the facts. They want to go to war against Saddam, they need a reason, then the analysts better get in line and give them that reason. If it turns out to be a lot of moonshine, they'd better take the fall for being "wrong." Goss' mission was to emaciate the CIA and make it sycophantic toward policymakers.

Enter John Negroponte. Negroponte is no angel. He has no problems with mass murder. He helped facilitate death squad activities in Central America during the Reagan years. However, it is entirely possible that he thinks that if one is going to do that kind of thing, one had better have good intelligence and not a CIA that thinks its duty is to tell the policymakers only what they want to hear.

Negroponte may be a thug, but he isn't a stupid thug. You can't just send death squads into villages and wipe out people unless you know that it's actually going to hurt the leftist guerrillas. Otherwise, you're just murdering people for a dubious purpose. To do that, Negroponte wants good intelligence. That means he wants professionalism at the CIA.

An emaciated CIA serves no useful purpose to anybody, except to really foolish tyrants who just want to extort oil from the Middle East by threatening to drop bombs on it. Look where that's gotten us. Even if we did needed to go to war against Iran, we couldn't do it. We're tied up in Iraq. We are tied up in Iraq for reasons that had nothing to do with national security because those stupid tyrants did not want to hear that it had nothing to do with national security.

Negroponte could be like Kissinger. Kissinger is a brilliant mind with no moral compass. Could you imagine Kissinger putting up with Porter Goss at the CIA? Not on your life. That could be what Negroponte is thinking.

[shain from kane]

1. Hit squad claims another victim. n/t

[MADem]

2. I think the problem is that these two aspects don't have to be

mutually exclusive.

Here's my guess on the mess:

--Porter Goss WAS fucking around with poker/limos/congressmen/lobbyists/contractors/hotel rooms/hookers. That story is so close to breaking wide open, it isn't funny. We don't just have Duke Cunningham flapping his gums, supposedly they've interviewed escort workers in the DC area. Photographs are alleged to have been taken. Who knows how juicy they are, but even if you see an ass in a thong going for the shrimp at the buffet table while a bunch of cigar-smoking cronies are playing cards, that's enough for middle America.

--Negroponte didn't like the way Porter was doing his job, and wanted him gone.

Now, if ONLY the first scenario was the problem, he'd be told to go at once. If ONLY the second scenario were at issue, he'd be given a few weeks to get his affairs in order, clear out his desk, perhaps show the new guy around and make introductions--that would make it less of a news story. The old "leaving to spend more time with family" excuse!

With both scenarios at play, he's gotta be gone NOW.

Because of the hookers, ya see!

[Jack Rabbit]

5. I'm not saying that Goss wasn't involved in Hookergate

EDITED for typing

I'm only suggesting that there were better reasons to can him than that. I am also suggesting that the principle reason he's gone is that Negorponte wanted him gone for reasons that had nothing to do with how he spent his evenings.

I'm sure the Bushies would rather have us talking about that, however. If the Republicans understand anything about sex, it's what a great attention getter it is.

[MADem]

8. Sure, but if it was just a case of Negroponte wanting him out of there

...he'd be given time to exit gracefully. Since Goss was Monkey's PERSONAL pick, they could have come up with a plausible excuse (a small medical problem, either his or a family member's, that he wanted to be home to help with, for example).

Instead, they RACE to dump him Friday, when the news is chockablock full of Reps on Ambien, thus cutting in half the bad publicity that they would get from dumping the guy so unceremoniously on a slower news day.

Which is why I think that Hookergate is gonna break sooner than we think.....

And hey, if it takes poker and putas to get America focused on corruption in government, well, it's sad, but so be it.

Ya gotta say one thing about the GOP...no pizza and consenting portly pepperpots for them. They have to go all out, with cronies, buffets, suites, limos, poker, cigars AND professionals! When they misbehave, they do it in a big way! And they don't just screw the professionals, they screw the American people at the same time--what management skills they have!!!

[peacetalksforall]

3. I'l;l bet non-player is a bald faced lie. Goss was given directions and

there is no reason to believe he wasn't following them given that the team directing him, including Negraponte, are all one and the same.

If Goss has been around for forty plus years and has been a team player with everyone from Poppy to the CIA, through the era of JFK, there is little logic in their trying to tell us that he's not a team player.

[Jack Rabbit]

16. That's what got me thinking

Goss may be an incompetent, but to accuse him of not being a team player seemed a little strange.

I still maintain the principle reason for his dismissal is losing a power struggle with Negroponte. The Hookergate angle is one about which the Bushies are too happy to allow the press and public to talk

[jjmalonejr]

4. This all sounds very plausible, but..

Why the urgency? Why did Bush come out on a Friday afternoon to make the announcement, at the same time that a freakin' Kennedy driving under the influence was the story of the day (and probably the weekend)?

And Bush is the President, not Negroponte. Why wouldn't he replace Negroponte instead and keep his toady Goss on board?

[MADem]

10. To cut the news in half, is why

The Ambien Representative business was a lucky break for them.

And the urgency is due to Hookergate. Both issues, the Negroponte dissatisfaction AND the Hookergate business, combined to form a perfect storm. They did it because they couldn't wait--they could have slowed the process if it was just a performance issue (the Negroponte aspect), but the minute you add prostitutes to the mix, it had to happen immediately.

[Jack Rabbit]

13. The performance issue

First of all, the ambien matter isn't a terribly lucky break for them. That story really didn't have very strong legs and wouldn't have had any at all if the Congressman hadn't been named Kennedy.

Back to the main subject of this post.

My theory is that Negroponte has more than just a performance issue with Goss. He has a policy issue with Bush and Cheney. They see intelligence as validating the policymakers' policy. You don't have to be the sharpest pencil in the box to know that they've got the cart before the horse. Negroponte has it in the right order: first, find out what's really happening and then act accordingly.

On the other hand, Negroponte has a very different system of values than you or I. I would have used the power of the United States to expose death squads and prosecute those who facilitated them. Negroponte was a facilitator of death squads.

[MADem]

15. The Kennedy thing would have been GREAT, had not Kennedy

done that presser. If you watched the evening talking head shows, they were loaded for bear, wanting to talk about the matter of 'special treatment' but the medical aspect of the case kind of ruined it for them. It's not nice to beat up on someone with an illness. Had the representative waited another day to make that announcement, Goss would have gotten even less attention than he did. But even at that, the news cycle was split between the ambien story and the Goss story.

I find it amazing that Negroponte didn't know his old pal Porter at all. I find it unbelievable, frankly. Pals from back in their college days, YALE '60??? Fencing club members, with the Monkey's UNCLE, (see him, sitting next to Goss in the photo below) no less?? A friendship spanning five decades???

Here we see them in happier times:



The performance issues ARE valid, but they aren't the reason that Porter was hustled off without time to gather up his desk plaque, his office gee-gaws and pen and pencil set.

I remain convinced the reason for his hasty departure was Hookergate.

And, joy of joys, Porter's replacement is said to be a Karl Rove doppleganger, or a central casting character who is a perfect fit for the job of "Third Nazi:"



Out of the frying pan, into the fire!

[0007]

12. Those are good questions.

[aden_nak]

6. How backward is this nation, that I am rooting for John Negrofuckingponte?

[Jack Rabbit]

7. Strange, isn't it?

If I'm right, then I'm rooting for him, too. Let's hope he can restore some professionalism at the CIA.

Meanwhile, I still hope he has only about a year to fulfill that task before the guilty votes come in from the Senate against Bush and Cheney.

[MADem]

11. Goss's replacement is even more of an evil fuckhead

So don't root for JN. He's replaced an incompetent evil asshole with a slightly more competent, and compliant asshole.

I root for JN...behind bars!

[Jack Rabbit]

14. I know what you mean

I think the Democrats should stand against the nomination of General Hayden in order to make warrantless wiretapping an issue. It is quite properly an issue. After all, it isn't as if Hayden is the only person who could clean up the mess at the CIA.

However, the Democrats should also use the hearings to determine what Goss was doing at the CIA. That should also be a campaign issue this year.

[0007]

9. Kissinger knew that Goss is a little fucking thief and had

no business even walking though the CIA doors again.