NEW YORK, 11 August 2004 — President George W. Bush yesterday named Florida Republican Congressman Porter Goss to take over as the new director of the beleaguered CIA.
“Porter Goss is a leader with strong experience in intelligence and the fight against terrorism,” Bush said yesterday at the White House Rose Garden.
“He knows the CIA inside and out. He is the right man to lead this important agency at this critical moment in our nation’s history.”
Goss, 65, currently heads the intelligence committee in Congress, where he served for nine years. During the 1960s and early 1970s, he served as a Central Intelligence Agency case officer.
Goss will replace George Tenet, who was appointed to head the CIA by President Clinton in 1997. Deputy CIA Director John McLaughlin was named the agency’s acting director after Tenet stepped down.
James L. Pavitt, the CIA’s deputy director for operations, also retired this month, leaving a vacuum at the top of the war on terrorism.
Last month Tenet said he was stepping down for personal reasons but his resignation came just as the Senate Intelligence Committee prepared to make public its report chastising the CIA for not giving fair treatment to dissenting views on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction potential before the war. The report said the intelligence used by the Bush administration to justify the war was flawed and overstated.
Goss had been among the names mentioned as a possible replacement and reports last month suggested that Goss was one of the leading nominees being considered by the Bush administration.
The Senate report, approved by the entire intelligence committee, dealt almost exclusively with the intelligence community’s misjudgment of the threat posed by Iraq. The report said, however, that there was no evidence the bad intelligence resulted from pressure from the White House.
With the presidential election nearing in November, debate over that politically explosive issue may be expected to shift during the next three months toward what needs to be done to improve the intelligence community. Congressmen have publicly said the security threat is too serious for the process of nominating a new CIA director to be slowed by politics.
Earlier this month, Sen. John D. Rockefeller of West Virginia, the vice chairman of Senate Select Committee and its top Democrat, told reporters: “You cannot leave in an acting director for six or seven months while you wait for the next inauguration, regardless of who’s elected. Let (a new director) be confirmed, and then whoever is re-elected or elected president, they will continue to use that person. That’s the standard.”
But Rockefeller took issue with a possible Goss nomination. Reacting to reports that Goss was being considered, he said he believed the appointment of a politician, “any politician, from either party, would be a mistake.” “We need a director that is not only knowledgeable and capable but unquestionably independent,” he said. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, agreed: “This is going to be a very hot nomination confirmation process.”
Federal authorities have said the terrorism threat is as high now as any other time since Sept. 11, and allege that Al-Qaeda wants to disrupt the November elections with another bold attack.
As a result, security is being beefed up for the Republican convention in New York at the end of this month, and also throughout Washington and New Jersey, which have also recently been named as possible terrorist targets.
