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Bush rebeals his choice of new chief Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=922702004http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=922702004
Bush reveals his choice of new CIA chief
ALEX MASSIE IN WASHINGTON AND FOREIGN STAFF
GEORGE Bush yesterday nominated a Republican congressman, Porter Goss, to head the CIA, saying the former undercover operative "knows the CIA inside and out" and can bolster its spy network.
The chairman of the House intelligence committee, who was a vocal critic of the CIA during an inquiry into the 11 September terror attacks, will face the formidable task of restoring faith in an agency whose standing is at an all-time low.
"He is well prepared for this mission," the president said of Mr Goss, who was an army intelligence operative before joining the CIA in the 1960s. "He’s the right man to lead and support the agency at this critical moment in our nation’s history."
Mr Goss, whose nomination must be confirmed by the Senate, had been mentioned prominently in speculation about a successor for George Tenet, who left amid a torrent of criticism of the agency’s handling of pre-war intelligence on Iraq.
Mr Bush still has a major decision ahead of him. He has embraced a cornerstone recommendation by the commission investigating the 11 September, 2001, terror attacks: creation of a new intelligence tsar to oversee the activities of the CIA and more than a dozen other intelligence agencies. However he has not named the tsar.
"I think every American knows the importance of getting the best possible intelligence we can get to our decision-makers," Mr Goss, 65, said after the announcement.
"Porter’s got a lot of work ahead of him" said a 9/11 report commissioner, Tim Roemer. "The big question today is: can he use his institutional knowledge [of the CIA] to change a system that has become dysfunctional?
"We new a new government for a new era, for a new threat," he said, adding that he hoped Mr Goss would endorse the commission’s recommendations.
The retired admiral Stansfield Turner, who was CIA chief during the Carter administration and supports John Kerry’s presidential bid, said Mr Goss’s selection marked "a bad day for the CIA". He said the Florida congressman was chosen simply "to help George Bush win votes in Florida".
"This is the worst appointment that’s ever been made to the office of director of central intelligence because that’s an office that needs to be kept above partisan politics," Mr Turner said.
The White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, would not rule out Mr Goss being picked as intelligence tsar, if congress creates that position. He also would not say if Mr Goss was a leading candidate.
Mr Goss worked in US army intelligence and the CIA’s clandestine service in Europe and Latin America from 1960-71, including a spell in Miami during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
Illness forced him to retire from active service and he moved to Florida, from where he was first elected to congress in 1988. He had planned to retire in 2002 but was persuaded to serve one more term.
Mr Bush asked him to serve as CIA director during dinner at the White House on Monday night.
In June, Mr Goss’s committee published a report that sharply criticised the CIA’s performance in the years leading up to the 11 September attacks, calling the CIA’s human intelligence gathering apparatus "dysfunctional" and adverse to change.
The report further charged that the agency’s intelligence analysts were timid and lacked proper focus. Mr Goss contended that without radical change the CIA "continues down a road leading over a proverbial cliff".
He will be charged with overhauling CIA operations and restoring morale within an agency that has been buffeted by a series of damning reports.
He said yesterday that the heart of the CIA was its officers, suggesting he would seek to increase the agency’s human intelligence-gathering capability rather than rely on technological surveillance.
Mr Goss is "someone who can walk in to the president and look him into the eye and tell him what the truth is and not flinch", said a Republican senator, Mike Dewine of Ohio.
Despite his credentials within the intelligence community and on Capitol Hill, some Democrats claimed Mr Goss was too "political" a choice.
In June the vice-chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, John D Rockefeller, warned that nominating "any politician, from either party, would be a mistake".
He said: "We need a director that is not only knowledgeable and capable but unquestionably independent."
Mr Bush said he expected his nominee would win support on "both sides of the aisle". Yesterday, Mr Goss won the support of a Florida senator, Bob Graham, the leading Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, who said his fellow Floridian was a man who would be "a vigorous and visionary leader".
Although Mr Goss welcomed what he termed the "constructive" recommendations of the 11 September Commission, he warned: "We cannot afford to make changes blindly, or in unnecessary haste. We can ill- afford to rush to judgment."
A New York Democratic senator, Charles Schumer, said Mr Goss is "a fine man and the fact that he’s a Republican congressman doesn’t bother me".
However, he added: "I would find it very hard to support any nominee who did not endorse the 9/11 commission recommendations on intelligence ... The focal point of this nomination is not who he is, but these recommendations."
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