Porter Goss: Cheney Cat's Paw

[ElvisL1ves]

Yep, that’s more scary than this:

He has been head of the intelligence oversight committee for eight years. Can you point to one substantive thing that he has done in his position as chair?" said a former counterterrorism official. “Instead of being a visionary, an activist, someone who would take the lead in getting the agency to reform, instead of addressing repeated intelligence failures that have occurred, Porter Goss was missing in action. He was just playing the status quo.”
…

The final report of the commission investigating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks also challenged Goss’s record, saying that he had given little attention to al-Qaida or terrorism before the attacks. Between January 1998 and the attacks, Goss’s committee held just two hearings on terrorism. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence held eight hearings; the Armed Services Committee held nine.

But until relatively recently Goss had the respect of his Democratic colleagues for a pragmatic, bipartisan style. That balance was gradually eroded over the last year, congressional staff say, as he cemented an alliance with the Vice President Dick Cheney and became more forthright about his Republican loyalties. Democrats accuse him of being too concerned with sparing the administration embarrassment.

He blocked House investigations into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and Washington’s links with its erstwhile Iraqi ally, Ahmed Chalabi.

The final straw for Democrats arrived the same week that Goss delivered his diatribe against the CIA. During a debate in the House on security, he held up a sign with a 27-year-old quote from the Democratic challenger, John Kerry, calling for budget cuts to the intelligence services. Goss later expressed regret, but by this week, when his nomination was announced, Democrats said he was too partisan to be CIA director.

The nomination hearings, apparently before the election, look like they’re going to be simply an opening for Senate Democrats to ask the questions about Administration political pressure on the CIA, the topic they had had to cede until after the election. If the poll numbers for Kerry still look good by then, they’ll be emboldened to stall this political appointment until Kerry’s in. I’d have to say the political arm in the WH wanted to score a point so badly that they’ll lose many more instead. All the protests from the talk-show faction that the Democrats are simply playing politics with intelligence look just as likely to backfire when it becomes inescapable that that’s what Bush is doing.

[Equipoise]

Thank you for those links ElvisL1ves and Cluricaun.

@ElvisL1ves

Yep, that’s more scary than this:

**He blocked House investigations into the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and Washington’s links with its erstwhile Iraqi ally, Ahmed Chalabi. **

How is this a good thing? How? HOW IS THIS A GOOD THING?? Please, I want to hear what kind of convoluted nonsense conservatives can come up with to RATIONALIZE THIS PERSON BEING HEAD OF THE CIA!

@Cluricaun

Ummm, people? This is some scary stuff right here. Porter Goss sounds seventh trumpet, the seal is open!

From that link:

The Goss bill tracks current law by stating that the DCI shall “collect, coordinate and direct” the collection of intelligence by the U.S. government—except that the CIA “may not exercise police, subpoena, or law enforcement powers within the United States.”

The bill then adds new language after that clause, however, saying that the ban on domestic law-enforcement operations applies “except as otherwise permitted by law or as directed by the president.”

How is this a good thing?
I’ve got my own to add. He pooh-pooh’d the investigation into the Valerie Plame case:

Goss says CIA leak not worthy of committee action

WASHINGTON – Rep. Porter Goss said Thursday that the uproar over allegations that White House officials purposely identified a covert CIA agent appears largely political and doesn’t yet merit an investigation by the House Select Committee on Intelligence, which he chairs.

Goss, who was a CIA agent himself from the early 1960s to 1971, said he takes such leaks seriously, but he distinguished between a willful violation of federal law and an inadvertent disclosure.

How is this a good thing? Why wouldn’t anyone, with even an ounce of decency and a sense of justice and outrage (especially concerning the outing of a fellow CIA officer), not want the most thorough, completely, detailed investigation possible?

Rationalize that, neocons. Anyone who thinks the Plame case was “inadvertant disclosure” is living on Mars under a rock, but even if it were, SOMEONE in the know leaked the name to Robert Novack, and an investigation should have been started immediately.

How can ANYONE rationalize that?

[elucidator]

Maybe not rationalize away, but calmly deplore.

Ms. Plame is definable as a “covert agent”, but she’s not parachuting behind enemy lines with codes tatooed on her labia. Her connection to American intelligence wasn’t openly acknowledged, but there are all kinds of good reasons for that. You wouldn’t assume that the Soviet Embassy’s Cultural Attache was a KGB goon either, necessarily.

He might reasonably regard the disclosure as stupid, childish and petty. But he might as reasonably conclude that its not a big hairy-ass deal, either. (I read a lot of spy novels, know all about this shit.)

Being a partisan, he might be inclined to cast a forgiving eye on this misdemeanor. No biggie, nobody at risk, can certainly wait until…Christmas, maybe.

I can blow right past all that. My problem with him is that he is being marketed as an intelligence expert, and I’m supposed to accept that his expertise outweighs his partisanship. I am offered his experience as an actual spook, and his work on the Oversight Committee. Clearly, I cannot expect to peruse his clandestine c.v.

But his work on the Oversight Committee, as it oversaw some of the most ham-fisted and up-screwed donnybrooks in years…gives me pause. Did he offer some astonishing insight while all that was going on, and was ignored? Or did he just go along with the flowing herd, and accept as gospel what turns out to be horseshit?

Why would I accept credentials consisting of supervising years of ihtelligences screwups, most recently Iraq and as long as your arm?

(I think he should nominate his Dad. George the First’s assessment of the consequences of continuing GWar I into Baghdad, as a ruinous committment with no valuable return, shows a clear intellect. Or at least a willingness to be persuaded by clear intellects, which is practically the same thing.)

[Apos]

@John Carter of Mars

You may not agree with the spoils system that has been around since the days of the founding fathers, and I may not agree with it, but never the less, we’re stuck with it.

It’s folly to hope that partisan lines will be crossed when an appointment to an important post is being filled.

I’d call you a master at changing the subject to avoid the point if you were, indeed, a master at it. You truly do amaze though, for different reasons.

The point is not that he picked someone on his team, but that he picked a politican (which is rare for this post) and an extremely devisive figure instead of someone that everyone would have agreed was a qualified and professional guy even if he was on the Republican side of things. He picked someone who’s openly ridiculed the man he might have to serve in just a few months. He picked someone who was at the heart of screwups the organization is trying to overcome. There was no need to do that. There are hundreds of qualified people for this job without such records: people who are actual intelligence experts without also being in the thick of the political fire.

[John_Carter_of_Mars]

Apos, years ago I accepted that nothing is done in WDC, by either party, because it is the good and proper thing to do. If there’s not some political advantage in it for somebody, it won’t happen. Bush and/or his advisors see an advantage to appointing this guy instead of somebody more likely to be acceptable to the massess.

Maybe his appointment is an “In Your Face” statement to persons as yet unknown.
Maybe the Congressman can deliver a key block of votes in Florida.

Look hard enough, you’ll find their reasons. When you do find them, it won’t be solely because they think this guy will do the best job. It would be the same if the Dems were in power.

[Apos]

Apos, years ago I accepted that nothing is done in WDC, by either party, because it is the good and proper thing to do.

None of this makes any difference. They still could have had some devious motive, fine. But why tap a politician with such a dubious history on the recent problems and who would be an open controversy? There are many many more advantages to pull on. Why always shoot for the maximum in partisan loyalty?

The whole problem with the CIA seems to be its close connection to political demands. At the very least, you’d think it would be a bad choice seeing as how the President seems to be doing the exact opposite of what is needed. But, just as with the 9/11 commission, where Bush declared that he was going to enact their recommendations on a czar and then lobbied for the almost the exact opposite of their recommendations, no one in the media seems to be willing to call him on it.

[ElvisL1ves]

Not “no one”, exactly. Thomas Oliphant today argued, convincingly IMHO, that the nomination was mainly a way to try to get Kerry to say something that could be used against him. Failing that, it gives Bush an opening to bash the Democrats as anti-patriotic.

One month ago, the Goss-as-director trial balloon had been deflated. The White House had lost interest as the election approached, and George Tenet’s acting replacement, deputy director John McLaughlin, stepped in credibly. According to the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts of Kansas, there was no point in proceeding, especially given the objections of his ranking Democrat, West Virginia’s Jay Rockefeller to naming a politician to a post where recent experience had above all demonstrated the centrality of independence.

What changed was that Kerry’s status as a potential commander in chief improved after the Democratic Convention. The White House started looking for actions Bush could take to shore up his own position, and naming a new CIA boss made it to the short list, especially if it could provoke Democratic opposition. By restricting themselves to asking embarrassing questions, the trap has been avoided.

The rest is a damn good read, too.

The hearings should be fun, for theatrical value anyway. If they happen at all, that is.