Wow. There is a tremendous amount of news breaking. I can’t keep up with it all. The New York Daily News reports that Porter Goss was indeed forced out over the Watergate free whores and poker story. But, interestingly, the push came not from Negroponte or Rumsfeld, but a little known group of wisemen.
A little-known White House advisory board convinced a reluctant President Bush to launch yet another high-profile shakeup of the nation’s intelligence community and can CIA Director Porter Goss, sources said yesterday.
Bush had already gotten an earful from Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte on the shortcomings of Goss, but the final push came from the “very alarmed” President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, intelligence and Congressional sources said.
Alarms were set off at the advisory board by a widening FBI sex and cronyism investigation that’s targeted Kyle (Dusty) Foggo, the No.3 official at the CIA, and also touched on Goss himself.
The 16-member bipartisan board, now headed by former Goldman Sachs executive Stephen Friedman, has the mandate to conduct periodic assessments on “the quality, quantity and adequacy of intelligence collection.”
The board, which includes longtime Bush confidant and former Commerce Secretary Don Evans, joined in the growing chorus inside and outside the CIA calling for Goss’ ouster, persuading Bush to act, sources said.
This is the same advisory group that determined, in December 2003, that the White House (not the CIA) was responsible for the famous 16 words getting into the State of the Union speech. The New York Times has a completely different angle on the story. In their version, Michael Hayden madea recent appearance before the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and complained about Goss’s reluctance to accept changes in the structure of the CIA. Meanwhile, Raw Story has more on Dusty Foggo and his potential resignation. Talk about “sand in the eyes”!!
In other news, Jason Leopold has a completely different take than VandeHei, on what Fitzgerald is up to. If Leopold is right, Fitzmas could be the event of the century and VandeHei is just carrying water for Rove. I hope to find out which reporter has the story right before too long.
In other GOP corruption news, Representative Bob Ney of Ohio’s former chief-of-staff has agreed to plea guilty in an Abramoff related case.
