Set the Spin Cycle to Goss

The disconnect between the official reasoning for Porter Goss' abrupt resignation yesterday and what lurks beneath the surface is staggering. All the major papers peg the problem as a "turf war" between Goss and National Intelligence Director John Negroponte (slightly below the surface is the fact that the two were frat brothers at Yale). And that could well be. Certainly there was some restructuring on intelligence in terms of who reports to whom and what-not. But I don't see how you can ignore the fact that Goss was connected, through the number 3 man at CIA "Dusty" Foggo (who he hired), to the emerging Duke Cunningham-Brent Wilkes-"poker parties" at the Watergate-hookers of unidentified gender scandal. Goss was kicking ass at CIA and purging it of elements undesirable to the President. He was working the partisan job he was hired to do. He was on top of all the leak probes. How did this not fit with the White House plan?

The New York Daily News is not afraid to say what lies beneath, but they're a lone voice in the traditional media:

"It's all about the Duke Cunningham scandal," a senior law enforcement official told the Daily News in reference to Goss' resignation. Duke, a California Republican, was sentenced to more than eight years in prison after pleading guilty in November to taking $2.4 million in homes, yachts and other bribes in exchange for steering government contracts.

Goss' inability to handle the allegations swirling around Foggo prompted John Negroponte, the director of National Intelligence, who oversees all of the nation's spy agencies, to press for the CIA chief's ouster, the senior official said. The official said Goss is not an FBI target but "there is an impending indictment" of Foggo for steering defense contracts to his poker buddies.

You have to turn to the blogosphere for any account of a larger connection than "the turf war". Laura Rozen, who appears plugged in on this issue, describes the disconnect:

The main question is why Goss's departure suddenly became a matter of the deepest urgency yesterday.

Think back to yesterday morning. The top news after the Patrick Kennedy crash was that Bush's poll numbers were at an all time low, and that he was starting to see a real erosion of support from conservatives. Gas prices and immigration and Iraq. So Bush gets briefed by his staff that day, and decides: hey, let's fire Porter Goss. He's killing morale at the Agency. He's just seen as far too political. And John Negroponte is threatening to quit if he stays. He's given me an absolute ultimatum. Let's get this out today.

Come on. That's just not how this White House has responded to these sorts of tensions in the past. They never move fast. They withstand criticism of appointments for months. They resist criticisms of unpopular agency heads for weeks (Michael "heckuva job" Brown), months (Snow), years (Rumsfeld). Think how much speculation there was in the press before Card's and McClellan's announced retirements, and how warm and friendly were those departures. It's hard not to believe that something moved very quickly on the radar this week that prompted an unusually quick decision. One that took a lot of people who would normally have been advised by surprise. (It's my understanding that the heads of Congressional intel committees were not informed in advance).

Negroponte has President Bush's ear every single day when he delivers the President's daily intel brief. If he had been lobbying to get rid of Goss, and the President was inclined to support that decision, there were a hundred ways to do it in a way that would project stability, confidence, normalcy. There was hardly a show of that yesterday. They could have named a successor. There could have been a leak to the press about Goss being tired (remember all the foreshadowing in the press about how tired Andy Card was after all those 20 hour days that preceded his departure?) and wanting to spend more time with his family, or that Bush was unhappy with him. There was none of that. It was a surprise move. What happened this week that Negroponte and Bush acted so swiftly?

Does the way it happened resemble the slo-mo, warm and fuzzy way Andy Card and Scott McClellan were retired? Or does it rather have more in common with the swiftly announced departures of Claude Allen and David Safavian from their posts, a few days before we hear of federal investigations?

This was clearly hastily administered, on the very same week that Foggo started to be investigated and the FBI started filing subpoenaes against the hotels. Foggo's resigning next week, he announced it to the papers in the middle of last night, and he's under federal investigation. I don't even know if I believe the "Foggo was an embarrassment and so Goss has to go" storyline (I mean, why not fire Foggo and be done with it?).

This diary suggests that the recent CIA pushback (Tyler Drumheller, Ray McGovern, Paul Pillar) might provide a clue. Of course, those guys are all retired. Retired generals weren't able to stop Rumsfeld. No, I think this is about a run-of-the-mill Washington corruption scandal.

Meanwhile Michael Hayden is being touted as the replacement. Hayden was out front as the public face for the Administration on the NSA wiretapping story, having been the top man at NSA at the time. I recall Hayden having trouble knowing the intent of the fourth amendment during those exchanges:

QUESTION: Jonathan Landay with Knight Ridder. I'd like to stay on the same issue, and that had to do with the standard by which you use to target your wiretaps. I'm no lawyer, but my understanding is that the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution specifies that you must have probable cause to be able to do a search that does not violate an American's right against unlawful searches and seizures. Do you use --

GEN. HAYDEN: No, actually -- the Fourth Amendment actually protects all of us against unreasonable search and seizure.

QUESTION: But the --

GEN. HAYDEN: That's what it says.

QUESTION: But the measure is probable cause, I believe.

GEN. HAYDEN: The amendment says unreasonable search and seizure.

QUESTION: But does it not say probable --

GEN. HAYDEN: No. The amendment says --

QUESTION: The court standard, the legal standard --

GEN. HAYDEN: -- unreasonable search and seizure.

[...]

GEN. HAYDEN: Just to be very clear -- and believe me, if there's any amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it's the Fourth. And it is a reasonableness standard in the Fourth Amendment. And so what you've raised to me -- and I'm not a lawyer, and don't want to become one -- what you've raised to me is, in terms of quoting the Fourth Amendment, is an issue of the Constitution. The constitutional standard is "reasonable." And we believe -- I am convinced that we are lawful because what it is we're doing is reasonable.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

This guy's going to run the CIA.

Stop using the telephone, folks.