Friday, May 05, 2006

Later, loser.


WASHINGTON (AP)--CIA Director Porter (Tampa Spook) Goss resigned unexpectedly today, leaving behind a spy agency still attempting to salvage a shred of credibility after allowing America's worst terrorist attack, as well as providing some of the information that formed the Bush Crime Family rationale for invading Iraq and snagged previous Director George Tenet the Medal of Freedom.

It was the latest move in a second-term shake-up of President Bush's cabal.

Making the announcement from the Oval Office, Bush called Goss' tenure one of transition, which presumably referred to the fact that it is over.

"He has led ably, for a cracker suck-up," Bush said, Goss at his side. "He has a five-year plan to increase the analysts and operatives. He just don't have the five years."

Goss said the trust, confidence and latitude that Bush placed in him "is something I could have never imagined, like so many things we've seen in the last five years."

"I believe the agency is on a very even keel, sailing well," Goss said. "I honestly believe that we have improved dramatically from those moments before the war when we were windswept and struggling to remain afloat."

The president did not name a successor, since there was no one he recognized in his immediate line of sight, but said that person, whoever it turns out to be, would continue Goss' reforms, whatever they are.

"As a result, this country will be more secure, like a child in his happy place with a favorite snuggle-blanket," Bush said. "We've got to win the war on terror, or something, and the Central Intelligence Agency is a vital part of the war. So I thank you for your service, and get out."

Goss, a former congressman from Florida, head of the House Intelligence Committee and CIA agent, had been at the helm of the agency only since September 2004, and was widely believed to have been named to keep him from saying anything stupid.

He came under fire almost immediately, in part because he brought with him several partisan shitheels from Congress who were considered too ignorant and unqualified for the CIA.

He had particularly poor relations with segments of the agency's powerful clandestine service, the so-called "Intelligence" part. In a bleak assessment, California Rep. Jane Harman, the Intelligence Committee's top Democrat, recently said, "The CIA is in a free fall," noting that employees with a combined 300 years of experience have left or been pushed out. "300 years is too long to work at one job," replied Goss at the time.

Under Goss and the sweeping & incoherent intelligence overhaul Congress approved in December 2004, the CIA was relegated to D.C.-area parking enforcement. With the installation of the country's first national intelligence director, John (Death Squad) Negroponte, Goss no longer sat atop the 16 intelligence agencies, as he had for nearly five months. Negroponte took that role, the best parking space, and many of the CIA director's responsibilities. That includes Bush's morning intelligence briefings, after which the president often seems disoriented and cranky.

Goss also had some public blunders. In March 2005, just before Negroponte took over, Goss tearfully told an audience at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library that he was overwhelmed by the many duties of his job, including devoting five hours out of every day to prepare for and deliver the presidential briefings in short sentences appropriate to the president's attention span.

"The jobs I'm being asked to do, the five hats that I wear, are too much for this mortal," Goss said. "I'm a little amazed at the workload, but mostly at all these hats."

Goss has pressed for aggressive probes about leaked information, then laughed.

"The damage has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out whatever our mission is," he told Congress in February, adding that a federal grand jury should be impaneled to determine "who apart from the president, the vice-president, the secretary of state and their various aides and flunkies is leaking this information."

Just two weeks ago, Goss announced the firing of a top intelligence analyst in connection with a Pulitzer Prize-winning story about a network of CIA prisons in Eastern Europe. Such dismissals are highly unusual, since such people are usually murdered.

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