UPDATE: CIA Director Goss Suddenly Quits, Dana Priest Comments

By: E&P Staff CIA Director Porter Goss, who had taken a strong stand against leaks to the press, suddenly resigned this afternoon, with the announcement coming from the White House shortly before 2 p.m.

Goss had served only 17 months in the job and no successor was named. President Bush gave no reason for his departure.

Asked on MSNBC why Goss really quit, The Washington Post's Dana Priest said, "You're going to have to wait for the morning paper for that. But I'll tell you, the agency is not on an even keel," as Goss claimed today. "His tenure has been very rough. He has not mended fences....Staffers he brought over with him [from Congress] created ill will with senior operatives who ended up resigning," she added.

"It's still very much an agency adrift. Goss did not really fight hard to keep the agency anywhere near what it used to be....Some people have said it is a shadow of its former self....They tried cosmetic changes, but really people there kept asking, what's his plan, what is the strategy, questons that have persisted to this day."

Later, on the Saturday, the Post reported that "senior administration officials said Bush had lost confidence in Goss, 67, almost from the beginning and decided months ago to replace him. In what was described as a difficult meeting in April with Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte, Goss was told to prepare to leave by May, according to several officials with knowledge of the conversation."

Although the Associated Press suggested this was only "the latest move in a second-term shake-up of President Bush's team," Goss's name has surfaced lately in rumors related to indicted former Rep. Randy Cunningham. Some cable news commentators, following the announcement, suggested it could be tied, even if loosely, to the bribery scandal involving Cunningham and others.

Bush said that Goss has "helped make this country a safer place and helped win the war on terrorism."

Said Goss: "I would like to report to you that the agency (CIA) is back on a very even keel and sailing well."

Fox News' Chris Wallace said he had checked with the White House and was assured this was nothing more than a shakeup move. Al Franken on Air America quipped, "He quit to spend more time spying on his family."

The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol weighed in, on Fox News: "It wasn?t done in a routine way. I don?t think people ? certainly people close to Goss did not expect this to happen. Senior congressmen and senators didn?t expect this to happen. I?m not sure the White House expected this to happen. ?I think there were either serious disputes or some internal problem at the agency or some scandal conceivably involving an associate of Goss?. Who knows? Something that popped this week and that caused this sudden event this Friday."

CNN's national correspondent John Roberts observed, "But this idea that he would suddenly leave, and particularly without there not being another candidate to take over from Goss, is quite startling.

"What's all swirling around the CIA with the Duke Cunningham case goes to a fellow named Brent Wilkes, who was an unindicted co-conspirator in that -- that Cunningham case. There is a fellow who has pled guilty in that case by the name of Mitchell Wade who contends -- and this is only a contention, allegations again -- that Wilkes had been procuring prostitutes and limousines for Duke Cunningham and had also been hosting poker parties at a couple of hotels in Washington, one of them being the Watergate....

"Now, Wilkes has denied any involvement in this prostitution idea, but we do know that he did have some poker parties and that a very senior official at the CIA had been a guest at a few of those poker parties, a fellow by the name of Dusty Foggo, who is actually the number three at the CIA. There is an inspector general's investigation at the CIA going on over Foggo's appearance at those poker parties. And the CIA, I should say, has also come out to say that at no time did CIA director Porter Goss ever appear at one of those poker parties.

"So, this is reaching into the highest levels of the CIA."