Dope on Goss

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Bush adviser's credibility questioned after 9-11 report
Pete Yost - Associated Press Writer

Tuesday, July 29, 2003

Goss, the Intelligence Committee chairman, said Monday night he believes Rice has been honest in her answers and served Bush well and that some of the recent criticism in Congress stems more from some lawmakers' frustration at not getting full access to information from the NSC about terrorism and Iraq.

"I don't think there is anything in the report that casts any shadows at all on Dr. Rice's credibility," Goss said. "I think she has served the president very well. She is more than a capable person, she is a brilliant person."

http://www.ljworld.com/section/worldnation/story/140305
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10/12/02

Goss at center of anti-terrorism debate

For months, the families of 9/11 terror attack victims have been trying to get Congress to establish an independent commission to review the federal government's anti-terrorism actions.

Their mission got stalled again this week. And this time, Stephen Push, a leader of the Families of September 11 organization, holds U.S. Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., primarily responsible.

That's because Goss holds a key post as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Goss on Thursday backed off from an agreement to tack an amendment establishing the commission onto his committee's annual intelligence budget reauthorization bill, Push noted.

http://www.sun-herald.com/NewsArchive2/101202/tp1ch5.htm?date=101202&story=tp1ch5.htm
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"I would say, in my judgment, that lives have been saved, terrorists have been disrupted, and our country is safer" because of the (Patriot) act, said Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. He is under consideration by Bush to become the next CIA director.

http://www.thestate.com/mld/thestate/news/nation/9110759.htm
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GOP says Iraq intelligence failure caused by Clinton budget cuts
2/11/2004

Rep. Porter J. Goss, R-Fla., said he heard a 1998 speech in which then-President Clinton warned that something must be done about Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and his weapons of mass destruction.

"Unfortunately, he did not complete that task before his term expired," Goss said at a Capitol Hill press conference.

Goss said the Clinton administration gutted intelligence assets in the 1990s so the U.S. agencies could not do any better that they have done recently.

Goss also said Clinton rarely, if ever, met with intelligence officials and was not "particularly engaged" on the subject.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-02-11-gop-clinton-intel_x.htm

This rebuttal:

"I respect Porter Goss and his service to the CIA, but I think he's part of the administration's attempt to redirect attention from what's really going on here, which is their distortion of the evidence" against Saddam, said Robert Boorstin, who was Clinton's national security speechwriter.

Now a senior vice president for national security at the Center for American Progress, Boorstin also said it was actually Bush's father who was first to cut intelligence spending after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.

When intelligence spending was increased in 1993, Goss complimented the Clinton administration "for going into this and seeing our true need," Boorstin quoted Goss as saying at the time.

http://www.kfmb.com/topstory22323.html
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GOP leaders in Congress join attacks on Clarke

By FRANK DAVIES- Miami Herald

"There's a huge difference between what Clarke said then and now, and there may be a lie involved," said Goss, a Sanibel Republican, who added that he was "just starting" to read through Clarke's two-year-old testimony.

"He seems to be saying now that President Bush did not focus on terrorism, which is 180 degrees from what we heard and what I think the truth is," Goss added.

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/politics/8287503.htm
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Rep. Goss, a former CIA case officer, has resolutely supported CIA Director George Tenet (CFR) and is not expected to disclose anything that would put Tenet in a bad light. According to New York Times reporter James Risen, "Mr. Goss played a quiet but influential role in persuading the Bush administration to keep Mr. Tenet.

http://www.nolajbs.net/editorial/rise_of_garrison.state.shtml

Goss, R-Fla., refused to be drawn into the controversy over how the Niger uranium allegation found its way into Bush's address, and said he remains confident in Tenet as CIA director.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/07/15/national1924EDT0746.DTL
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Twenty years ago, no one thought you would ever see a resurrection of the paramilitaries in the CIA, said Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., a former CIA officer who chairs the House Intelligence Committee.

The war on terror has changed that thinking, Goss said, and has revived support for a paramilitary more flexible than the Pentagon?s elaborate hierarchies could allow.

Goss said the CIA paramilitaries are better able to distinguish the good guys from the bad guys the enemy doesn?t wear uniforms and it's become much more complicated to get the lethality on the target.

http://www.newsfrombabylon.com/article.php?sid=1390
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MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Goss, this is what else your report said, and I showed it to Mr. Wolfowitz; I’m going to show it again: “The evidence does not point to the existence of large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons.”
REP. GOSS: That’s absolutely true. The evidence does point to a lot of denial and deception to hide and disperse those weapons, and that is what we’ve run into. We underestimated quite seriously and quite badly the denial and deception capability of the Saddam regime. They did a brilliant job of taking things and hiding them. When you start finding weapons of mass destruction plans under rose bushes in scientists’ back yard, you begin to understand a little built the depth of the distances they went to.
MR. RUSSERT: But the president quoted the British as saying that Saddam could launch a chemical or biological attack within 45 minutes. If, in fact, there are not large stockpiles of weapons, was that accurate?
REP. GOSS: I cannot speak for the British intelligence. The British maintain that it was accurate and the president quoted the British report.

http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/001634.php
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WASHINGTON -- Rep. Porter Goss said Thursday that the uproar over allegations that White House officials purposely identified a covert CIA agent appears largely political and doesn't yet merit an investigation by the House Select Committee on Intelligence, which he chairs.

Goss, who was a CIA agent himself from the early 1960s to 1971, said he takes such leaks seriously, but he distinguished between a willful violation of federal law and an inadvertent disclosure.

"I would say there's a much larger dose of partisan politics going on right now than there is worry about national security," said Goss, R-Sanibel. "But I would never take lightly a serious allegation backed up by evidence that there was a willful -- and I emphasize willful, inadvertent is something else -- willful disclosure, and I haven't seen any evidence."

Goss said he has no evidence that the controversy is more than a product of "wild and unsubstantiated allegations, which are being obviously piled on by partisan politics during an election year."

http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2003310030460
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House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss — a former CIA clandestine services officer and leading contender for CIA director if President Bush is re-elected — quietly introduced a bill that would significantly expand the CIA director's executive and management authority over the whole intelligence community, a Goss spokesman confirmed to TIME. While the Director of Central Intelligence has responsibility for all intelligence gathering, more than 80 percent of the spy budget is outside the CIA's control, much of it in the Pentagon's spy satellite programs. A Goss aide said the bill would give the CIA director authority over 70 percent of the intelligence budget. According to a fact sheet, Goss' bill would implement many of the recommendations issued in December 2002 by a joint inquiry into 9/11 by the House and Senate intelligence committees, and it would boost the director's authority to wield more management power than some critics believe outgoing Director George Tenet has mustered. The chairman of the September 11 Commission told TIME he expects that his panel will review Goss' bill while writing its reform recommendations in the coming weeks.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,655889,00.html?cnn=yes
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More?

[No Mandate Here.]

1. About the Plame outing, this is my favorite (?!) quote of his...

"Somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA, I'll have an investigation."

If the bozo lets himself be quoted saying something like this, then I am glad that he will be CIA director for only a few months- if at all...

Of course, UnKKKLe Karl will smear everyone and everything that 'gets in the way of national security" if there is any attempt to delay or deny...

[starroute]

2. And add this

http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/timeline/main/essaysaeed.html

On October 7, 2001, Pakistani President Musharraf fired Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed, the head of the ISI. The next day, some newspapers, mostly in India but also in Pakistan, shockingly said he was fired for his role in the 9/11 attacks. For instance, a Pakistani newspaper stated, "Lt. Gen. Mahmood Ahmed has been replaced after the FBI investigators established credible links between him and Umar Sheikh, one of the three militants released in exchange for passengers of the hijacked Indian Airlines plane in 1999... Informed sources said there were enough indications with the US intelligence agencies that it was at Gen. Mahmood's instruction that Sheikh had transferred 100,000 US dollars into the account of Mohammed Atta..."

<snip>

The relationship between the US and the ISI is hard to fathom. On September 4, 2001, ISI Director Mahmood Ahmed arrived in Washington, D.C. On September 10, a Pakistani newspaper reported on the visit, saying that it had "triggered speculation about the agenda of his mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council" as well as meetings with CIA Director George Tenet, unspecified officials at the White House and the Pentagon, and his "most important meeting" with Mark Grossman, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. The article suggested that "of course, Osama bin Laden" was the focus of some discussions.

<snip>

But what many don't know is that on the morning of September 11, Lt. Gen. Mahmood was at a breakfast meeting at the Capitol with the chairmen of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, Senator Bob Graham (D) and Representative Porter Goss (R). The meeting was said to have lasted at least until the second plane hit the World Trade Center. Goss is a self-admitted 10-year veteran of the CIA's clandestine operations wing. Goss and Graham were later the heads of the joint House-Senate investigation into the September 11 attacks, and Goss in particular made headlines for saying there was no "smoking gun" indicating that the government had sufficient foreknowledge to prevent the September 11 attacks. Also present at the meeting were Senator John Kyl (R) and the Pakistani ambassador to the US, Maleeha Lodhi (note that all or virtually all of the people in this meeting also met Lt. Gen. Mahmood in Pakistan a few weeks earlier.) Senator Graham later said of the meeting: "We were talking about terrorism, specifically terrorism generated from Afghanistan," and the New York Times mentioned that bin Laden was specifically being discussed.

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3. Great additions!

More?