Porter Goss - JMWAVE Case Officer and Last DCIA

 PORTER GOSS -  JMWAVE CASE OFFICER AND LAST DCIA

In his book “Zenith Secret,’ former US Army Ranger Captain Bradley Ayers mentions a CIA case officer named Porter. “I met Porter on one of my visits to the station while training the commandos on Elliot Key. Porter was in his mid-20s, I estimated, and by build, manner, appearance, and facial features, he might have been a youthful clone of Gordon Campbell. I believe this man was Porter Goss, President George W. Bush’s appointee to head the CIA in 2005.”

Chris Whipple, in his book “The Spy Masters – How the CIA Directors Shape History and the Future,” (Scribner, 2020), he devotes a brief summary of Porter Goss’ reign as the last director of the CIA before it was relegated as another intelligence agency under – the cabinet post  - Director of National Intelligence.

Of Goss, Whipple writes (p. 216-8), “On paper, Porter Goss seemed well qualified to steer the agency through the political minefields of the post 9/11 era. Garrulous and amiable, he was knowledgeable about intelligence; he’d served as a CIA case officer for almost a decade right out of college.”

“Few people came to be director as well prepared as Porter,” said McLaughlin. “He’d been chairman of the committee that oversees the agency. He’d been a case officer. And he was a damn nice guy.”

Whipple: “Nominated b Bush, he was sworn in as CIA director on September 4, 2004. Alas, the CIA under Goss was headed into treacherous waters, with a crew of bumblers who were in way over their heads.”

…Porter Goss had stumbled into the CIA almost by accident. As a junior at Yale in 1959, looking for a job in the placement office, ‘I went into the wrong room and literally ended up talking to a CIA recruiter,’ he recalled. After a two year stint in the Army, Goss signed up with the agency and was sent to Florida, where he was a case officer during the Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1970, stationed in London, Goss caught a bacterial infection that nearly killed him. He resigned in order to regain his health, and didn’t return to the agency.”

“With a family inheritance, Goss didn’t need to work; he owned houses in Sanibel Island, Florida, and Fishers Island in Long Island Sound, and a farm in Virginia. But he bought a newspaper and later went into business. Elected to the House in 1989, he specialized in intelligence issues and worked his way up to chain to the HPSCI. Now as CIA director, he was coming full circle. But he was about to commit a cardinal sin from which he’d never recover.”

“Tom Twetten, the former head of the Near East Division, tried to warn the new director, ‘Porter, don’t bring your staff with you,’ he told him. ‘You need to have people on the inside who understand what’s going on here as your aides.’  But Goss was on a mission. He believed he was empowered, by both the White House and Capitol Hill, to ‘crack his wip’ on the agency. The new director arrived at Langley with a Praetorian Guard of deputies from his congressional office. Ignorant of Intelligence matters and inept as managers, they were dubbed ‘the Gosslings.’”

“The Gosslings immediately launched a purge. ‘These guys started settling scores with officers who talked back at them,’ said one operative. Anyone thought to be disloyal to Bush or who questioned the Gosslings’ authority was a target. The more valuable the CIA officer, it seemed, the more expendable. Making matters worse, Goss declared that the CIA should support the president and his policies. Support policies? Tailoring intelligence to a political agenda was not what anyone at Langley signed on for. It was all too reminiscent of James Schlesinger decreeing that the CIA ‘was going to stop fucking Richard Nixon.’”

Eventually Joshua Bolton, the chief of staff, told Goss that “the president had decided it was time for a change.”

KELLY NOTES: Portor Goss is a still living JMWAVE witness, and probably can be found at one of his homes in Sanibell Island, Florida, Long Island or his farm in Virginia, and should be questioned about his JMWAVE case officer days.