MAY 6, 2006
Director of C.I.A. Is Stepping Down Under Pressure
By MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE
WASHINGTON, May 5 -- Porter J. Goss resigned under pressure on Friday as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, ending a stormy 19-month tenure marked by plummeting morale inside the agency's ranks and turf battles within government.
Administration officials said that President Bush was to name a successor on Monday, and that the leading candidate was Gen. Michael V. Hayden of the Air Force. General Hayden is the top deputy to John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence.
As Mr. Negroponte has fought to reshape the intelligence operations, his office has repeatedly clashed with Mr. Goss and his staff at the C.I.A.
A decision to nominate General Hayden as C.I.A. director would mean that his role in overseeing the eavesdropping could be a focus of Senate confirmation hearings. He has ardently defended it.
"Look, N.S.A. intercepts communications," he said to the National Press Club in January. "And it does so for only one purpose, to protect the lives, the liberties and the well-being of the citizens of the United States from those who would do us harm."
Agency lawyers, he said, had said the program was strictly legal.
Mr. Goss, 67, a former Republican congressman who was an intelligence agency officer overseas in the 60's, took over at the agency as it was still reeling from major failures, the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the inaccurate prewar assessments of Iraqi weapons.
In his brief time at the helm, the agency was wracked by the departure of many veterans who bristled under what they described as Mr. Goss's overly political leadership.
Appearing with Mr. Goss in the Oval Office, President Bush called his tenure a period of transition, one that saw the agency lose its status as the nation's premier spy agency.
Former intelligence officials said the departure was hastened because a recent inquiry by the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board had found that current and former agency officers were sharply critical of Mr. Goss's leadership. In particular, the board found that Mr. Goss was resisting efforts to make recruiting of spies overseas the agency's main focus, the officials said.
Mr. Goss's departure also occurs amid an investigation into the activities of the executive director of the agency, Kyle Foggo, a longtime agency official whom Mr. Goss elevated to the senior post. The inspector general of the agency is examining Mr. Foggo's connection to Brent R. Wilkes, an old friend and a military contractor who has become embroiled in the widening scandal surrounding former Representative Randy Cunningham, Republican of California.
A White House official said that Mr. Goss's departure had been discussed for several weeks between Mr. Goss and Mr. Negroponte and that Mr. Bush had full knowledge of the discussions.
The president "has been pleased" with Mr. Goss's leadership, the official said, adding that the agency had "gone through a tumultuous period of change, and he's been the figure who's had to implement that change, and that makes you a divisive figure."
The high-profile resignation is the latest to buffet the administration, which faces low approval ratings and is in the midst of a staff shake-up ordered by Joshua B. Bolten, the new White House chief of staff.
Mr. Bush and Mr. Goss sat side by side on Friday in the Oval Office to announce the departure. Each offered praise for the other. Mr. Goss said the agency he had led was "on a very even keel, sailing well."
"I honestly believe that we have improved dramatically," he said.
Mr. Bush described Mr. Goss as having "led ably," adding, "He has got a five-year plan to increase the number of analysts and operatives, which is going to help make this country a safer place and help us win the war on terror."
In a statement to agency employees, Mr. Goss called the agency the "gold standard" of the intelligence community and said he was proud of what his management team had accomplished.
"When I came to C.I.A. in September of 2004, I wanted to accomplish some very specific things, and we have made great strides on all fronts," the statement read.
It cited large increases in recruiting and new technologies to help analysts decipher raw intelligence.
Mr. Goss said on Friday he would stay at the agency a few weeks.
A friend and former colleague of Mr. Goss said the position and the constant criticism that came with it had taken a toll.
"It was like watching a friend in pain," the friend said, insisting on anonymity. "I think he got in over his head."
Among the officials who left soon after Mr. Goss's arrival, after clashing with him and his staff, were John E. McLaughlin, who had been acting director; A. B. Krongard, who had been executive director, the No. 3 post; and Stephen R. Kappes and Michael Sulick, who held the top two posts in the directorate of operations, which runs human spying.
On Friday, senior lawmakers gave tepid reviews of Mr. Goss's record. "Director Goss took the helm of the intelligence community at a very difficult time in the wake of the intelligence failures associated with 9/11 and Iraq W.M.D.," Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who is chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement. "Porter made some significant improvements at the C.I.A., but I think even he would say they still have some way to go."
Some top Democrats were far more critical, accusing Mr. Goss of driving out some of the most experienced veterans at the agency and destroying morale.
"In the last year and a half, more than 300 years of experience has either been pushed out or walked out the door in frustration," Representative Jane Harman of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said. "This has left the agency in freefall."
The people interviewed for this article included critics and supporters of Mr. Goss, including some directly involved in intelligence management and oversight. Some were given anonymity to let them speak freely about Mr. Goss's resignation.
A former agency official said Mr. Goss had hoped to preserve the agency's traditional role as the government's main source of intelligence analysis as well as its center of human spying, even though the lead analytical role is now played by Mr. Negroponte's office. The prestige of the C.I.A. has suffered multiple blows in recent years, beginning with the failure to detect the Sept. 11 attacks followed by the faulty assessments about the status of Saddam Hussein's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.
It was those failures that in part led to the resignation in 2004 of Mr. Goss's predecessor, George J. Tenet.
Mr. Goss started at the agency just as it was about to lose its status as the premier spy agency. The bipartisan panel investigating the Sept. 11 attacks had recommended creating a cabinet-level post to take control over the disparate intelligence agencies and replace the C.I.A. director as the president's principal adviser on intelligence.
Congress accepted the recommendation, and last April Mr. Negroponte was installed as the first director of national intelligence. Mr. Negroponte, not the C.I.A. director, now gives the president his morning intelligence briefing and sits at the table in cabinet meetings.
Mr. Goss, a longtime congressman from Florida, had been considering retirement in late 2004 when Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney pressed him to run the agency after Mr. Tenet's recommendation.
The agency was widely viewed as being at odds with the administration over the Iraq war, and the White House gave Mr. Goss marching orders to end what it saw as a campaign of leaks to the news media by agency insiders who opposed administration policies.
Yet the leaks have continued, and in recent months Mr. Goss began an intense effort to find out who was responsible for news reports that disclosed details about highly classified programs.
The crackdown, which included rare "single issue" polygraph tests of senior officials, led to the firing last month of Mary O. McCarthy, a veteran who was working in the inspector general's office at the agency.
Elisabeth Bumiller, David S. Cloud and James Risen contributed reporting for this article.