He was a CIA operative before he went into politics, but now Dick Cheney's close friend is in the director's chair and ready to do his masters' bidding, writes Shane Hegarty
Few people know exactly what Porter Goss was doing during the 1960s. If he told you, as the saying goes, then he’d have to kill you. When he entered politics he needed special permission to reveal that he had spent that decade with the Central Intelligence Agency, but could not to go into details.
The closest he has come to letting the public in on his secrets was to once
say that he had "some very interesting moments in the Florida Straits". That's generally believed to refer to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, and it has meant plenty of speculation about a man who was there during the dirty days, when spies were spies and schemes were outrageous.
He has acknowledged that he recruited and ran foreign agents and that he wouldn't be comfortable travelling to Cuba. He was with the CIA, after all, during a period when its attempts to assassinate Castro were comical in their ingenuity. There was the infamous poisoned cigar, and the booby-trapped
seashell that they hoped would surprise the keen diver. There's no proof that Goss had anything to do with such murky doings, but this aspect of the past has been a handy hook for the media. If you like your politicians
tough, then here's a guy who was plotting to kill world leaders long before Arnold Schwarzenegger was dreaming about pretending to do it.
He left the CIA in 1970 due to serious illness, but this week, 34 years after he hung up his cloak and sheathed his dagger, the Republican
congressman from Florida is back with the CIA as George W. Bush's nomination as director of the agency. He replaces George Tenet, who told Bush it was a "slam dunk" that weapons of mass destruction would be
found in Iraq, and walked in June before he was pushed.
Whatever secrecy surrounds Goss's previous stint with the agency, this time around he is going to be under severe scrutiny. The CIA is not in good shape. Morale is low. Its reputation is in tatters. A series of investigations
have concluded that it should have done more to prevent the September 11th attacks and that it shouldn't have been so keen to see weapons of mass destruction where none existed. The 9/11 commission called for an overhaul of the intelligence community that will encourage better co-operation between the 15 agencies that comprise it, and a national intelligence director (NID) who will oversee the lot, effectively demoting the director of the CIA.
Goss's nomination, however, has been controversial. Some regard him as too close to the CIA. He has often defended its mistakes and been wary to embrace the recommendations of the 9/11 commission. Rather than the
NID post recently created by Bush, he would prefer greater powers to be granted to the head of the CIA.
For eight years, he has been Republican chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, during which he has sometimes shown himself reluctant to shine a light on a shadowy world. He has been accused of blocking investigations into the torture at Abu Ghraib and into the
debacle surrounding former White House favourite Ahmad Chalabi.
Yet, he has also been a vocal critic of the CIA, most especially the culture which developed under Tenet. This year, he accused the agency of "ignoring its core mission" and warned it was heading "over a proverbial cliff" after years of mismanagement. It should, he argued, return to the old days of
"human intelligence", when information was gathered not by computers and sophisticated eavesdropping, but by planting agents within groups or behind enemy lines. It needs to toughen up. "We are being too namby-pamby about taking risks to get the good penetration of the hard targets in the
denied areas," he said. After the 1998 terrorist bombings of the US Embassies in East Africa, Goss declared publicly that the CIA
had become too "gun-shy".
He has no problem with political assassinations as a last resort. It is, he said recently, "a concept most Americans are fairly comfortablewith". It doesn't quite "go back to the 'Wanted, Dead or Alive' poster", he added, but if you've exhausted all other avenues, then "the possibility of lethal force is well
understood".
His doubters wonder about his record as chairman of the House intelligence committee. John MacGaffin, the CIA's former number two at the Directorate of Operations (responsible for spying missions) and a senior FBI adviser, says: "He's better qualified than anyone else around today. At the
same time, he's also part of the problem; that is, all the things the 9/11 commission chronicled went on during his watch and came as no surprise to him. The question is, when push comes to shove, can he avoid politicisation
and move forward on the changes?"
Goss is a Bush loyalist, predominantly thanks to a close friendship with Vice-President Dick Cheney. Goss has stood up for the White House, even at the expense of his former colleagues in the CIA. When a White House official publicly exposed the identity of undercover agent Valerie Plame – allegedly as an act of revenge for her husband, former ambassador to Iraq Joseph Wilson's doubts about WMDs – Goss defended the government, saying such accusations were politically motivated. Despite outrage within
the CIA, he didn't see any need for an investigation. "You know how much time we would spend doing leaks if we did nothing but leaks? That's all we'd do." However, his Republican instincts sensed a chance at a jab against Bill Clinton. "Somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA, I'll have an investigation."
So, while the CIA's critics called for an independent director, President Bush has instead appointed a Republican politician with a record of backing his president. When, last June, John Kerry gave a major speech on national security issues, it was Goss who was chosen to retort on behalf of the White House. "John Kerry's speech," he remarked, "amounted to little more than
political 'me-tooism'." Kerry had "neglected the president's historic achievements" while at the same time embracing "the goals that the president has already laid to make the world a safer place". He co-wrote an article
for the Tampa Tribune titled "Need Intelligence? Don't Ask John Kerry." With only three months left to a presidential election, it is safe to assume that a Kerry victory would make Goss's tenure the shortest in the CIA's history.
Which is why the timing of his appointment has been questioned. It's been suggested that Bush nominated him simply to give the impression of a government moving the CIA forward rather than leaving it rudderless at a critical time. Some commentators have wondered about appointing Goss
to a job that, if the 9/11 commission recommendations are implemented, might soon fulfil a very different purpose.
If he does remain in the job, though, he will preside over a CIA facing its most crucial period. If President Bush secures four more years, there may be more military adventure abroad. There is the continuing pressure to destroy Al-Qaeda before it strikes at the US again. Osama bin Laden's
freedom remains a major problem. Goss, though, is known to be aware that the CIA's problems include its lack of contacts within the Muslim world. He told Michael Moore, in an interview not included in Fahrenheit 9/11, that he wouldn't get a job with today's CIA because he doesn't speak Arabic, have the correct "cultural background" or the required technical skills. "The things that you need to have, I don't have."
Whether he has the time to effect change will be down to the results of November's election. Whether he has the determination to do it properly is the bigger question. The head of the CIA, say critics, should be interested
in analysis and not politics. The agency should be independent of political concerns. The immediate future of the CIA could depend on whether Goss is interested in telling the White House what it needs to know or only what it wants to hear.