November 17, 2004
New C.I.A. Chief Tells Workers to Back Administration Policies
By DOUGLAS JEHL
NEW YORK TIMES

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 - Porter J. Goss, the new intelligence chief, has told Central Intelligence Agency employees that their job is to "support the administration and its policies in our work,'' a copy of an internal memorandum shows.

"As agency employees we do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies," Mr. Goss said in the memorandum, which was circulated late on Monday. He said in the document that he was seeking "to clarify beyond doubt the rules of the road."

While his words could be construed as urging analysts to conform with administration policies, Mr. Goss also wrote, "We provide the intelligence as we see it - and let the facts alone speak to the policymaker.''

The memorandum suggested an effort by Mr. Goss to spell out his thinking as he embarked on what he made clear would be a major overhaul at the agency, with further changes to come. The changes to date, including the ouster of the agency's clandestine service chief, have left current and former intelligence officials angry and unnerved. Some have been outspoken, including those who said Tuesday that they regarded Mr. Goss's warning as part of an effort to suppress dissent within the organization.

In recent weeks, White House officials have complained that some C.I.A. officials have sought to undermine President Bush and his policies.

At a minimum, Mr. Goss's memorandum appeared to be a swipe against an agency decision under George J. Tenet, his predecessor as director of central intelligence, to permit a senior analyst at the agency, Michael Scheuer, to write a book and grant interviews that were critical of the Bush administration's policies on terrorism.

One former intelligence official said he saw nothing inappropriate in Mr. Goss's warning, noting that the C.I.A. had long tried to distance itself and its employees from policy matters.

"Mike exploited a seam in the rules and inappropriately used it to express his own policy views,'' the official said of Mr. Scheuer. "That did serious damage to the agency, because many people, including some in the White House, thought that he was being urged by the agency to take on the president. I know that was not the case.''

But a second former intelligence official said he was concerned that the memorandum and the changes represented an effort by Mr. Goss to stifle independence.

"If Goss is asking people to color their views and be a team player, that's not what people at C.I.A. signed up for,'' said the former intelligence official. The official and others interviewed in recent days spoke on condition that they not be named, saying they did not want to inflame tensions at the agency.

Some of the contents of Mr. Goss's memorandum were first reported by The Washington Post. A complete copy of the document was obtained on Tuesday by The New York Times.

Tensions between the agency's new leadership team, which took over in late September, and senior career officials are more intense than at any time since the late 1970's. The most significant changes so far have been the resignations on Monday of Stephen R. Kappes, the deputy director of operations, and his deputy, Michael Sulick, but Mr. Goss told agency employees in the memorandum that he planned further changes "in the days and weeks ahead of us'' that would involve "procedures, organization, senior personnel and areas of focus for our action.''

"I am committed to sharing these changes with you as they occur,'' Mr. Goss said in the memorandum. "I do understand it is easy to be distracted by both the nature and the pace of change. I am confident, however, that you will remain deeply committed to our mission.''

Mr. Goss's memorandum included a reminder that C.I.A. employees should "scrupulously honor our secrecy oath'' by allowing the agency's public affairs office and its Congressional relations branch to take the lead in all contacts with the media and with Congress. "We remain a secret organization,'' he said.

Among the moves that Mr. Goss said he was weighing was the selection of a candidate to become the agency's No. 2 official, the deputy director of central intelligence. The name being mentioned most often within the C.I.A. as a candidate, intelligence officials said, is Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden of the Air Force, the director of the National Security Agency, which is responsible for intercepting electronic communications worldwide. The naming of a deputy director would be made by the White House, in a nomination subject to Senate confirmation.

In interviews this week, members of Congress as well as current and former intelligence officials said one reason the overhaul under way had left them unnerved was that Mr. Goss had not made clear what kind of agency he intended to put in place. But Mr. Goss's memorandum did little to spell out that vision, and it did not make clear why the focus of overhaul efforts to date appeared to be on the operations directorate, which carries out spying and other covert missions around the world.

"It's just very hard to divine what's going on over there,'' said Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, who said he and other members of the Senate intelligence committee would be seeking answers at closed sessions this week. "But on issue after issue, there's a real question about whether the country and the Congress are going to get an unvarnished picture of our intelligence situation at a critical time.''

Mr. Goss said in the memorandum that he recognized that intelligence officers were operating in an atmosphere of extraordinary pressures, after a series of reports critical of intelligence agencies' performance in the months leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks and the war in Iraq.

"The I.C. and its people have been relentlessly scrutinized and criticized,'' he said, using an abbreviation for intelligence community. "Intelligence-related issues have become the fodder of partisan food fights and turf-power skirmishes. All the while, the demand for our services and products against a ruthless and unconventional enemy has expanded geometrically and we are expected to deliver - instantly. We have reason to be proud of our achievements and we need to be smarter about how we do our work in this operational climate.''

Funny thing is, Michael Scheuer, is a Republican, and voted for Bush.

That's weird about Scheur - why would you vote - no matter your party affiliation for someone you believe is pursuing a dangerous policy

The CIA and politics
The New York Times Editorial Friday, November 19, 2004

When President George W. Bush rushed to appoint Porter Goss, a partisan Florida congressman, as director of central intelligence before the election, the choice raised concerns about how serious Bush was about fixing one of the central problems with American intelligence: that the president was being told what he wanted to hear to confirm his policy choices, rather than what he needed to know. Now that Bush has been safely re-elected, Goss is only heightening those fears.
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No one who has read the 9/11 commission's report or the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on the prewar intelligence on Iraq could doubt the need to shake things up in the intelligence apparatus. But what Goss is doing at the Central Intelligence Agency is starting to seem less like reform and more like a political purge.
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Goss has removed the head of the clandestine operations division and his deputy - both career intelligence officers. The No. 2 CIA official, John McLaughlin, has resigned, along with four other senior people. Others are reported to be thinking about leaving. Many of them feel trampled by Goss' inner circle of political operatives from the House, where he was chairman of the Intelligence Committee.
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Now, Douglas Jehl of The New York Times has obtained a memo, circulated on Monday, in which Goss appeared to be signaling his displeasure with leaks about intelligence on Iraq during the presidential campaign. He reminded his staff twice that they work for a secret agency and said all dealings with the public and with Congress would be handled by his team.
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Certainly, the CIA should not be taking sides in presidential campaigns. Many of Bush's supporters claim that high-ranking members of the agency attempted to undermine the president's re-election - if Goss has evidence of that, he should present it. But it's inappropriate for him to suggest that it's the job of the CIA to support a particular administration and its political decisions.
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The CIA's loss of public credibility in recent years has been due, in part, to a perception that the agency saw how much the Bush administration wanted to invade Iraq and cooked its conclusions to support that goal. What the country wants, and deserves, is an agency where intelligence operatives feel free to tell the administration that policies are based on wrong or incomplete information. They should be able to blow the whistle on mistakes and wrongdoing to the appropriate bodies in Congress without having to go through Goss' palace guard.
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Lawmakers who oversee intelligence have said they will ask Goss about these events. We hope that their questioning is aggressive and that they make it clear that what was acceptable politics on Capitol Hill is not acceptable at the CIA - particularly if Bush plans to compound his mistake in choosing Goss by elevating him to the new job of national intelligence director when Congress finally gets around to creating that much-needed position.
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2 Top Officials Are Reported to Quit C.I.A.

By DOUGLAS JEHL

Published: November 25, 2004

The New York Times

http://nytimes.com/2004/11/25/politics/25i...artner=homepage

CIA Warns Bush: U.S. Isn't Defeating Iraq Insurgents
Posted on Monday, December 20 @ 09:59:16 PST by JWSmythe

http://freeinternetpress.com/modules.php?n...rticle&sid=2553

The CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department have warned President Bush that the United States and its Iraqi allies aren't winning the battle against Iraqi insurgents who are trying to derail the country's Jan. 30 elections, according to administration officials.

But they said the warnings — including one delivered this week to Bush by CIA Director Porter Goss — indicated that U.S. forces hadn't been able to stop the insurgents' intimidation of Iraqi voters, candidates and others who want to participate in the elections.

"We don't have an answer to the intimidation," one senior official said.

"The terrorists will do all they can to delay and disrupt free elections in Iraq, and they will fail," Bush told cheering Marines last week in Camp Pendleton, Calif.

Editor: Ya, free elections. That's what they're rebelling against. Not the fact that the U.S. occupied their entire country, killed many of their people, including women and children, and civilians are dying every day.

If another country occupied the United States, and said, "You will live the way we say to live, until the day we give you a free election, and you risk being shot just because you exist", I'd sure as hell pick up my gun and rebel too.

Consider during the "Cold War" era, when everyone was sure there would either be an invasion by the Russians, or a nuclear war. What would any American do if the Russians invaded. We'd shoot back. That's what the Iraqi's are doing.