If Tenet, Bremer and Franks get one...
Mr. Goss's time with the C.I.A. was marked by the departure of many long-time agency officials, some of whom complained that he had been overly political in his approach to his job. Mr. Goss sometimes appeared uncomfortable in the office, as when he remarked in early 2005 that the workload was heavy and he sometimes felt pulled in different directions.
Mr. Goss's departure comes as the president and his top aides are trying to reinvigorate an administration whose public support has sagged in recent public opinion surveys. The new White House chief of staff, Joshua Bolten, has already announced some changes and has said that more are on the way. And he pointedly invited people who were thinking of leaving the administration by the end of the year to step down a lot sooner.
C.I.A. Director Goss Resigns
By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON, May 5 — Porter J. Goss abruptly resigned today as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, a post that had been diminished in the restructuring of the intelligence bureaucracy after the Sept. 11 attacks.
With Mr. Goss sitting next to him in the Oval Office, President Bush said the director had offered his resignation this morning. "I've accepted it," Mr. Bush said, praising the retiring director for his "candid advice" and his integrity.
The president said Mr. Goss had led the C.I.A. "ably" through a period of transition, and that he had "helped make this country a safer place." Mr. Bush did not mention a successor, but The Associated Press reported that a senior administration official said one could be chosen as soon as Monday.
Mr. Goss said it had been "a very distinct honor and privilege" to lead the C.I.A. "I would like to report to you that the agency is back on a very even keel and sailing well," Mr. Goss said. He did not explain his decision, and both he and Mr. Bush ignored questions after making their statements.
But it was no secret in Washington that Mr. Goss and John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence whose position came into existence as the result of the Sept. 11 attacks, had engaged in turf battles. Mr. Negroponte was at the Oval Office announcement, but said nothing.
Goss was caught between a rock and a hard place after the Intel reform bill.
The CIA career senior management ( above station chief level) who were fired/resigned since Goss arrived as DCI are usually portrayed as " anti-Bush", technically that is true but their motivations did not come from partisan politics. They are the generation of the Pike-Church hearings and the Schlessinger-Turner DCI era and as a matter of professional practice are exceptionally risk-averse. They don't like HUMINT, they don't like covert ops they don't like bold judgments in NIE documents and they employ lawyers at every step of the process to ensure that nothing actually gets accomplished. It was inevitable that this group was going to oppose a forward role in the war for the CIA or a revitalization of covert ops. They dragged their feet in the Clinton era when that administration wanted action but clashing sharply with the Bush agenda was inevitable.
The intel reform bill that created the NDI position was also a recipe for bureaucratic conflict since it more or less took the DCI role away from the DCI while leaving the DNI line of authority exceptionally vague. Negroponte, moreover, is a very smooth, very effective, troubleshooter who has been involved in the intersection of the covert ops, diplomacy and military intervention since the 80's. Success here as NDI meant steamrolling over Goss and establishing the authority of NDI over the IC, so that is what Negroponte did. He simply outclassed Goss by several orders of magnitude as a bureaucratic insider and did not have any baggage to defend or distractions weighing him down that hobbled Goss ( the fact that Goss was reportedly spending up to 5 hours a day on the PDB was a sign that there were major problems happening, the DCI should briefly do the " final edit" not be deeply involved in drafting the PDB itself)
The only way the DCI-NDI relationship will work is if the DCI becomes effectively the NDI's main deputy for HUMINT as the NSA head is for SIGINT which is why Hayden is going to be the new DCI, he's already in the deputy position and owes the CIA bureaucracy nothing ( unlike Goss who had, despite his feuds, institutional loyalties)