That’s The Ticket

by digby

Laura Rozen raises all the right questions about this Porter Goss snowjob. I too found it a bit hard to swallow that the reason he was forced out was because of his fierce loyalty to the CIA in his turf wars with Negroponte. His rep was just the opposite — he was a wrecking crew at langley. It’s possible that both could be true, but Rozen points out all the reasons for skepticism, and there are a lot of them:

So then he was forced out on very short notice? No notification to the House Intelligence committee? Not a single newspaper report in the past few months about the tension between Goss and Negroponte? (Indeed check out the recent coverage about Congressional raised eyebrows over the empire Negroponte is building, and his alleged visits to a fancy DC club for swim and cigar breaks). On the contrary, can anyone remember a single article about Goss fighting for his folks at the Agency?

I don’t. Much of the operative camp of the Agency perceived Goss as a political enforcer, someone who wasn’t just not looking out for them, but who almost leaned towards suspicion of them, someone who was rather passive and out of touch and who delegated day to day affairs to his staff, “the Gosslings,” led by the fiercely partisan Patrick Murray. I don’t believe I have ever heard from people in that world a sense that Goss was looking out for them or the Agency, and not seen a single article where anyone ever suggested that. The newspaper coverage has suggested rather that a lot of the experienced bench strength cadre at the Agency had left in fights with Goss and his staff during his rocky tenure, and that the Agency had never been more demoralized. So all that time, during all those departures, Goss was covertly fighting for his folks against the new intel reorganization? He was a misunderstood champion of the Agency?

Does something about this story line that Goss suddenly left because of his long-standing tension with Negroponte, his fraternity brother from Yale, over Goss fighting to hold CIA turf seem a bit canned to you?

(More…)

Yeah. With botulism inside. I suspect this is Snow taking out his new toy for a spin — and the press corps, thrilled to give the Bush administration a 276th chance, have all piled in the back seat.

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