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, Gen. Michael Hayden made a 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”!!
Jim VandeHei
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.
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(GovExec.com) Dec. 4, 2005 — According to past and present CIA officials interviewed over the past month, CIA executive director Kyle “Dusty” Foggo — whose career duties have encompassed letting CIA contracts — has had a long, close personal relationship with two contractors identified (though not explicitly named) in court papers as bribing Cunningham: Brent Wilkes of the Wilkes Corp., whose subsidiaries include defense contractor ADCS; and former ADCS consultant Mitchell Wade, until recently president of defense contractor MZM, Inc. It is a relationship, the CIA officials say (with some putting a particular emphasis on Wilkes), that has increasingly been of concern.
One current and two retired senior CIA officials told Government Executive that (as noted last week by reporter Laura Rozen in The American Prospect’s TAPPED blog) the relationship of Wilkes and Foggo — who the CIA’s Web site declares is “under cover and cannot be named at this time,” even though he is pictured and identified on a federal charity web page — has been a subject of increasing concern by some at Langley.
WASHINGTON D.C. (ABC News Exclusive) March 3, 2006 — A stunning investigation of bribery and corruption in Congress has spread to the CIA, ABC News has learned.
The CIA inspector general has opened an investigation into the spy agency’s executive director, Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, and his connections to two defense contractors accused of bribing a member of Congress and Pentagon officials.
The CIA inspector general has opened an investigation into the spy agency's executive director, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo.Odd isn’t it, just a week after Porter Goss sacked Mary McCarthy… working for the IG at the CIA!
Opening of Larry Johnson’s diary ::
The case against the CIA Intelligence Officer, Mary McCarthy, fired for her alleged role in leaking information about secret prisons to the Washington Post’s Dana Priest smells a little fishy.
● The Duke Of Hurl! :: Connections MzM Inc. ◊ by Connecticut Man1
Mon Nov 28th, 2005 at 11:12:22 PM PST
≈ Cross-posted from Larry Johnson’s diary — Why Did Goss Resign? ≈
Fri May 5th, 2006 at 11:34:07 PM PST
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
Interesting stuff, Boo.
You may have identified the mechanism by which the PermaGov whispers in the princeling’s ear… That link was a real eye-opener, especially if you follow it and check out the backgrounds on the folks serving on the FIAB.
The whirlwind-of-scandals-can’t-keep-track-of-them-all you describe is giving me serious, serious Watergate-era deja-vu. Life may be about to get really interesting.
Yes, these advisory boards are a little weird. Of course, they spawn all kinds of conspiracy theories, a la the Trilateral Commission, etc.
It’s really not a conspiracy though. Is anyone surprised that an unelected and unconfirmed head honcho from Goldman Sachs is in charge of this committee that is so powerful that it can get the DCI tossed on his ass?
If you are surprised to hear it, you haven’t been paying attention to a lot of whatI’ve been writing lately.
I love the smell of a Republican scandal in the morning.
Now to just let the voters know that every single Republican running for re-election is tainted by these scandals. Hey, they’d do it for us.
(Doesn’t that sound like an illness: “Ney aide”? Hope we don’t catch it!)
There were so many expectations from Raw Story etc. about multiple indictments that turned out to be just Libby. Fitzgerald looked then to be cautious in his indictments, though you could read his suspicions in his press conference answers. So a Rove indictment strong enough to get him out of action is about the extent of what I’m willing to believe at this point. And even that is still a lot iffier, unless there is evidence we don’t know about.
On the other hand this whole Plame thing is now so complicated that I can’t even follow it. But Fitzgerald seems unlikely to announce a bunch of indictments of multiple conspirators etc., just judging from what we’ve seen of him. I’d love to be wrong.
Is Scowcroft still the head of the PFIAB, Pres. Foreign Intel Advisory Board)? Certainly if he is this revelation bolsters my idea put forward in another thread that the CarlyleGroup gang are making a serious run at driving the neocons from power, pushing out Goss and installing someone else who will take orders from Negroponte, (not a neocon), not from Cheney or the Pentagon.
I think Bush may have removed Scowcroft from PFIAB, but even so, I’d be willing to bet there’s not a single neocon on that board.
The New York Times is a piece of crap. Boy, do they censor stuff. I never knew that until I started hanging around blogs
talking about crooks…look in to this one.
muckracker
They are all crooks!!!!!!!!!! every last one of them!!!