New York Times WASHINGTON, Sept. 12 - As chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Porter J. Goss, Republican of Florida, watched over American intelligence agencies through all seven years that George J. Tenet was running them. But even in those turbulent times, Mr. Goss cast himself more as a rebuilder than as a watchdog. Now, as he seeks to succeed Mr. Tenet as director of central intelligence, Mr. Goss is facing questions about those years of oversight. At a time when agencies were struggling to rebound from a post-cold-war nadir, current and former Congressional officials say, Mr. Goss was a consistent champion of bigger budgets but much less persistent when it came to scrutinizing mistakes. In private, even senior Democrats concede that Mr. Goss is all but certain to win confirmation. Among those who have publicly praised his nomination is Senator Bob Graham, a Democrat and a fellow Floridian, who served with Mr. Goss as the co-chairman of a joint Congressional inquiry into the Sept. 11 attacks. But Mr. Goss's critics include many who say that he bears some responsibility for failing to call attention earlier to the broader shortcomings within the intelligence agencies that both the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Sept. 11 commission have singled out. Their scathing reports have helped forge a consensus in Congress that a broad institutional restructuring is needed. "He is no mere bystander but something close to a full participant in the evolution of U.S. intelligence from the late 1990's up to now," said Steven Aftergood, an intelligence specialist who is a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists. The Senate panel that will consider Mr. Goss's nomination at hearings beginning Tuesday is the same one that produced a 511-page report in July about prewar intelligence on Iraq. By contrast, Mr. Goss's committee has yet to produce the "serious, focused and comprehensive review" of that issue that he promised 15 months ago. Democrats have already promised to call attention to that contrast. "We need to know why the chairman largely ignored one of the biggest intelligence failures in recent history," said a spokeswoman for Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate committee. In keeping with Congressional tradition, Mr. Goss has declined interview requests while awaiting confirmation. His spokeswoman said that she would be unable to address inquiries for this article. But a former Republican Congressional official who has worked closely with Mr. Goss defended his role. "Goss was particularly adamant about rebuilding and restructuring the intelligence community into something that could address the challenges of the next 50 years," the former official said. An avuncular 65-year-old who favors rimless glasses, suspenders and slicked-back hair, Mr. Goss, who spent a decade as a C.I.A. case officer, is the first former spy since William J. Casey, in 1981, to be nominated as the country's intelligence chief. As an eight-term member of Congress, he is the first politician since George Bush, in 1976, to be chosen for the post. In the months before his nomination in August, Mr. Goss had grown more outspoken in his criticism of intelligence agencies, going so far as to warn in a committee report in June that the C.I.A. was heading "over a proverbial cliff" through mismanagement of its human spying operations. Since becoming chairman, he has called for speedier efforts to rebuild the country's clandestine service, whose ranks were slashed by post-cold-war budget cuts. But in general, Mr. Goss has a reputation for being less than zealous when it comes to criticizing compatriots, either within the C.I.A. or in the Bush administration. The House Intelligence Committee operates mostly behind closed doors, leaving few fingerprints beyond the annual written reports that are issued to accompany authorization bills. The current and former Congressional officials who discussed Mr. Goss's tenure included both Republicans and Democrats, though none would comment for the record, saying they did not want to jeopardize their relationships with a likely future intelligence chief. Still, among the shortcomings cited by the officials was the fact that under Mr. Goss's leadership, the committee has not conducted inquiries into a recent series of intelligence setbacks. The last investigative report published by the committee came in 1998, the officials said, and had to do with Iranian arms shipments to Bosnia. "I guess you have to say, who was in charge here?" said Representative Rush D. Holt of New Jersey, a Democratic member of Mr. Goss's panel. In its report in July, the Sept. 11 commission did not criticize Mr. Goss by name, but it described House and Senate committees that oversee intelligence as having been "dysfunctional," and made clear that it held them responsible in part for failing to detect the shortcomings that it said contributed to the terrorist attacks of 2001. In interviews, Democratic Congressional officials said Mr. Goss would now have to persuade critics that he possesses the independence to say things that presidents and intelligence officers might not want to hear. Among those critics are relatives of victims of the Sept. 11 attacks, who have taken note of Mr. Goss's initial opposition to the idea of creating the independent commission, a position he changed only after President Bush himself changed his mind. "Explain to me how failure to exercise adequate oversight qualifies you to lead our intelligence agencies," said Kristen Breitweiser of Middletown, N.J., whose husband, Ronald, was killed in the World Trade Center. Still, in choosing Mr. Goss for the job, Mr. Bush hailed him in August as someone who "knows the C.I.A inside and out" and would be "the right man to lead this important agency at this critical moment in our nation's history." And Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, who as chairman of the Senate panel will preside over this week's hearings, has praised Mr. Goss as "uniquely qualified in terms of experience and expertise to lead the intelligence community during this time of challenge and reform." Mr. Goss had initially planned to retire, with his wife, to a home in the mountains of Virginia in late 2002. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, both Mr. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney implored him, successfully, to postpone that plan until the end of this year, so that he could stay on for an additional term as chairman of the intelligence committee. He is not running for re-election this year but agreed to defer his retirement plans again when Mr. Bush nominated him to become intelligence chief. As Congress debates whether to create the post of national intelligence director, a move recommended by the Sept. 11 commission and endorsed by the White House and leading members of Congress, Mr. Bush has not yet signaled whether he would ultimately nominate Mr. Goss to that job. But at least in the short term, as director of central intelligence, Mr. Goss would wield more power than did Mr. Tenet, under executive orders that the president issued in August to address some of the commission's criticisms. For that reason and others, including the fact that it has been seven years since the Senate last considered the nomination of an intelligence chief, Mr. Goss's hearings are likely to attract significant attention. To date, however, the Senate committee has scheduled only a single day of hearings, to include both an open and a closed session, and does not plan to call any adversarial witnesses, according to Congressional officials. Mr. Goss served in Latin America and Europe during a dozen years as an intelligence officer, first with the Army and then, for a decade, with the C.I.A. He left the agency in 1971, after contracting a life-threatening staph infection, and moved with his young family to Sanibel Island, Fla., where he was among a group that owned a local newspaper, and where he ultimately began his political career as a small-town mayor. As recently as June 1995, less than two years before he took charge of the House committee, Mr. Goss endorsed legislation that would have cut intelligence personnel by 20 percent over a five-year period, as part of a broad budget-cutting measure. But under his leadership, the Republican-dominated panel regularly used its annual authorization reports to warn that intelligence programs were underfinanced, particularly during the Clinton administration. "Our intelligence capabilities have dwindled since the breakup of the Soviet Union, and we have failed to build new capabilities that will become increasingly critical," Mr. Goss's panel said in one typical report, from May 1998. In the last year, in light of the failure to find the illicit weapons that intelligence agencies said were part of Saddam Hussein's arsenal in Iraq, Mr. Goss has spoken even more critically about what he has called "huge gaps" in American intelligence capabilities. But though he has long criticized the growing partisanship of politics in Washington, he used public statements this spring to offer sharp criticisms of Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee. And Mr. Goss has remained a steadfast defender of Mr. Bush. "I think the president has done very well with insufficient intelligence," Mr. Goss said late last year in an interview. And he has repeatedly suggested that the answer to improving American intelligence lies in the more aggressive use of covert action on the part of intelligence operatives. In addressing the prewar intelligence on Iraq, Mr. Goss initially joined Representative Jane Harman of California, the top Democrat on his committee, in promising an active role. Last September, after a preliminary review based on 19 volumes of classified material used by the Bush administration to make its case for the war on Iraq, Mr. Goss and Ms. Harman sent Mr. Tenet a letter sharply critical of the intelligence agencies' performance, a finding that foreshadowed by 10 months a similar conclusion reached by the Senate Intelligence Committee. "The absence of proof that chemical and biological weapons and their related development programs had been destroyed was considered proof that they continued to exist," Mr. Goss and Ms. Harman said in the letter. In a conclusion that infuriated the C.I.A., the letter criticized intelligence agencies for using largely outdated, "circumstantial" and "fragmentary" information with "too many uncertainties" to conclude that Iraq had unconventional weapons and ties to Al Qaeda. Even at that time, however, Mr. Goss cushioned his criticisms, saying he believed that the agencies' judgments on Iraq had been properly couched to reflect the incomplete nature of the intelligence. And in the months since, his committee has shown little evidence of having followed up on the inquiry. In August, Mr. Goss said the investigation had been put "on hold" as the panel turned its attention to the broader question of intelligence reform. A few days later, after being nominated by Mr. Bush, he stepped down as committee chairman, leaving the fate of any inquiry on Iraq's illicit weapons to his successor, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan. In interviews, Democratic members of the committee and Democratic staff members said their efforts to pursue a wider investigation had been repeatedly stymied by Mr. Goss and his staff.
September 13, 2004
C.I.A. Nominee Said to Champion Budgets Over Watchdog Role
by Douglas JehlCopyright 2004 The New York Times Company