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Goss cia career that never was Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/nation/9367352.htmhttp://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/nation/9367352.htm
Posted on Wed, Aug. 11, 2004
Goss' CIA career almost never was
Nominee came to agency by accident
BY LARRY LIPMAN
Cox News Service
WASHINGTON — Rep. Porter Goss "knows the CIA inside and out," President Bush said Tuesday. In fact, heading the spy agency would be the culmination of Goss' career in and around the nation's intelligence services.
Goss, 65, who has been chairman of the House Intelligence Committee for eight years, is a former CIA officer. But he came to the agency by accident.
Goss' father was a sales manager for a metals company, and one day the company took part in a job fair at Yale University, where Goss was majoring in classical languages.
As Goss described it two years ago to the Lee County Times of the Islands, a Florida magazine, when he went to the school's employment center to visit his father's company, "I went left instead of right, and I walked into the wrong room, and the guys in the wrong room were CIA."
The CIA recruiters were intrigued by the ROTC cadet's language skills. They interested Goss in the agency, but first he had to complete his two years of Army duty. After graduating from Yale with high honors in 1960, Goss spent the next two years ostensibly in Army intelligence, but most of it was with the CIA.
For the next decade, Goss was a case officer. He spent some time in the Miami area during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962 and then traveled around Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe and Africa as an undercover case officer recruiting local agents.
Most of that time Goss and his wife, Mariel, and their four children lived either near the CIA headquarters in McLean, Va., or in London. During a visit to Washington, Goss became seriously ill and collapsed in his hotel room.
He was diagnosed with a staph infection, which had attacked his heart and other vital organs. The cause of the infection was never determined.
The illness and the months of recovery brought the spy in from the cold. He was offered a desk job at the CIA but decided instead to retire. He left the agency in 1971 and settled in southwest Florida's Sanibel Island, a haven for retired CIA operatives.
Goss immediately became involved in the community's business and government scene. With other former CIA officers, Goss founded an award-winning weekly newspaper.
He soon drifted into politics. Goss helped incorporate the city of Sanibel and became its first mayor in 1974. He served for eight years on the Sanibel City Council, including four one-year stints as mayor.
In 1983, Goss was the surprise choice of then-Gov. Bob Graham to fill a vacancy on the Lee County Commission. Goss easily won re-election to the commission and in 1988, when Connie Mack III gave up his House seat to run for the Senate, Goss was elected to Congress. He has been re-elected every two years since then.
Goss has been seeking to increase funding for intelligence since before the 2001 terrorist attacks and was a consistent defender of George Tenet as CIA director. Yet in June, Goss' committee delivered a blistering assessment of the agency's leadership.
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