Senate Must Not Capitulate To Blackmail on Goss Nomination

by Edward Spannaus

Were the Senate to go along with the Administration's provocative nomination of Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) for CIA Director, it would mark a cowardly capituation to the stonewalling of any investigation of the crimes of Vice President Dick Cheney and his cronies in the Bush Administration. The Administration's obstruction has been aided greatly by the Republican leadership of key Congressional oversight committees, and in this, no one has exceeded the role played by Porter Goss, as chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Goss has blocked any investigation of three critical subject-areas clearly falling within his jurisdiction:

The fabrication of intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs, under pressure from Cheney and other Administration officials, in order to justify the invasion of Iraq;

The illegal disclosure by White House officials, of the identity of CIA covert operative Valerie Plame, in an effort to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson, who had debunked the fable that Saddam Hussein was trying to buy uranium "yellowcake" ore from Niger; and

The abuse and torture of prisoners in Afghanistan, Iraq, and in secret detention centers operated by the CIA and the Pentagon, and apparently done at the behest of military and civilian intelligence officials.

'Show Me the Dress ...'

Exemplary of Goss's obstructionism and his disregard for Congress's Constitutional responsibility to conduct oversight of the Executive Branch, is the following incident:

Last Fall, calls were mounting for a Congressional investigation of the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity�which was a matter of deep concern, and anger, from CIA officers who justifiably believed that the leak, especially under the circumstances when Plame had been operating overseas and undercover on investigations of weapons of mass destruction, put her life, and the lives of her sources and contacts, in danger.

In an Oct. 3, 2003 interview with the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, Goss declared he had no evidence that the uproar over the Plame leak was anything more than a product of "wild and unsubstantiated allegations, which are being obviously piled on by partisan politics during an election year."

Goss said, "I haven't seen any evidence" that there was a "willful" violation of Federal law, but he said he would act if he did have such evidence�and then he laid out his standard of evidence:

"Somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA, I'll have an investigation," Goss announced, in a clear reference to the contrived Monica Lewinsky scandal which led to the impeachment proceedings against former President Clinton�in which Goss voted for impeachment.

'Cheney's Cat's-Paw'

Goss has been in Congress for 12 years, and has chaired the House Intelligence Committee for the past eight. Well before being elected to Congress, he had served in the CIA operations directorate for almost a decade, and was an Army intelligence officer before that, also reportedly working with the CIA. For most of his time in Congress, Goss was considered a CIA loyalist, but this changed dramatically in recent months, when Goss joined in the Administration's efforts to blame the CIA for the "intelligence failure" around the 9-11 attacks. Many observers date Goss's about-face, to the June 3 announcement that the then-Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, was intending to resign, which accelerated Goss's own, none-too-subtle, campaign to replace Tenet as DCI.

Later in June, after Goss's committee issued a blistering broadside against the CIA and particularly its Directorate of Operations, Tenet took the unusual step of publicly responding to Goss, saying he was "deeply disappointed" at the committee attacks, and warning against political pressure, which can "create a chilling environment in which analysts are hesitant to make tough calls."

Many sources, inside and outside of the intelligence community, say that Goss has become particularly close to Vice President Cheney. They say that it was at Cheney's behest, that Goss initially opposed the creation of an independent commission to investigate 9-11, and then, when the Administration was forced to give in, Goss insisted on strict limitations on its investigative powers.

In the July 16 EIR, we reprinted a column by 27-year CIA veteran Ray McGovern, who wrote already at that time: "There is, thankfully, a remnant of CIA professionals who still put objective analysis above political correctness and career advancement. Just when they thought there were no indignities left for them to suffer, they are shuddering again at press reports that Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) may soon be their new boss."

McGovern said that Goss's appointment as CIA director "would be the ultimate in politicization," explaining that Goss "has long shown himself to be under the spell of Vice President Dick Cheney."

In recent days, it has been widely reported that Goss had been planning to retire in 2002, but that he was encouraged to stay on by Dick Cheney. And a New York Times report cited unnamed Congressional Democrats as saying that "their impression was that Mr. Goss was unwilling to pursue matters that could cause him problems with the vice-president's office."

Other CIA Veterans React

The reaction to Goss's nomination has been especially strong among a number of retired CIA officials. Retired Adm. Stansfield Turner, who was DCI in the late 1970s, called the nomination "a bad day for the CIA," and charged that Goss was chosen simply "to help George Bush win votes in Florida." "This is the worst appointment that's ever been made to the office of Director of Central Intelligence, because that's an office that needs to be kept above partisan politics," Turner said.

Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson was quoted as saying, in an interview with UPI's Richard Sale: "There's one thing Goss really didn't do for the past several years�he didn't chair the House Intelligence Committee, in spite of what his resum� claims. Instead, he did the dead man's float."

Former CIA counter-terrorism chief Vincent Cannistraro agreed: "Goss has never been very distinguished, but he's protected. He's a Bush loyalist and has been in the forefront of those who have tried to place the major blame for the 9-11 attacks on the Agency."

Sources still serving in the intelligence community told UPI's Sale, that Goss and other Bush loyalists are ignoring the degree of internal opposition within the CIA to using bogus claims about Iraqi WMD, such as the Niger yellowcake claim. "Goss took no stand at all, provided no support" for those in the Agency opposing these fraudulent intelligence claims, says one former CIA operative.

"This whole appointment is a cheap political trick," said Judith Yaphe, a former top CIA analyst. "One of the recommendations of the [9-11] Commission is that no political appointee be made Director. But this is so clearly political. If Goss isn't a political appointee, than I don't know what is." "This will do nothing but cause more disarray at Langley," Yaphe predicted.

Attacks on Kerry

After Goss's name had been floated in June as a possible nominee, there were warnings by leading Senate Democrats, and even by some Republicans such as Sen. Pat Roberts (Kan.), the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, that Bush should not nominate someone with such partisan political credentials. Nevertheless, in a deliberate political provocation, clearly intended to boost his flagging election campaign, Bush has gone ahead and done just that.

This is in spite of�or perhaps because of�Goss's acting as a GOP spokesman in attacking Democratic Presidential nominee John Kerry, including his delivering the official Republican response to a Kerry speech on June 1, and attacking Kerry in a speech on the House floor as recently as June 23.

Goss's recent attacks on Kerry were not his first. During the revival of the Ollie North/Contra drug-running scandal in 1996, Goss singled out Kerry for criticism, claiming that Kerry "had conducted quite an expensive investigation and came up with absolutely no evidence" of drug trafficking by the Contra networks. In fact, Kerry's Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Drugs and Law Enforcement found, in its own words, that "there was substantial evidence of drug smuggling through war zones on the part of individual Contras, Contra suppliers, Contra pilots, mercenaries who worked with the Contras, and Contra supporters throughout the region."

Kerry's thoroughly documented bombshell report was issued in April 1989, and was met with thundering silence and a media blackout.

The Cleland Treatment What changed between June, when the White House pulled back on Goss's nomination, and August? According to a number of accounts, the White House was deeply concerned about polling data showing that Kerry "had closed the gap with Bush on the handling of terrorism and was slightly ahead as fit to be commander in chief." Something had to be done to reassert Bush's leadership in the war on terrorism, and the calculation was that by nominating Goss, the White House could put Democrats in a bind: If they opposed the nomination, Bush and Cheney could accuse them of obstructing the war on terrorism.

The New York Times noted the obvious: that Democrats fear a replay of what was done to then-Senator Max Cleland of Georgia in 2002, when Republican operatives conducted a vicious smear campaign against the Vietnam veteran, a triple-amputee, by twisting his opposition to the Administration's version of the Homeland Security bill, to portray him as an ally of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Cleland was defeated at the polls.

Thus, at present, many Senate Democrats are indicating that Goss may be bloodied up during his confirmation hearings�now scheduled to start in early September�but that ultimately, he will be confirmed.

This would be a serious blunder, signaling the willingness of Senate Democrats to submit to such disgusting blackmail, rather than to fight for truth and the vital interests of the nation. It would represent a capitulation to the Nixon-style cover-up of the crimes of the Cheney gang in its pursuit and conduct of the illegal Iraq War, and an abandonment of Congress's essential role in our system of Constitutional checks and balances.

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STORY #2 SAME SUBJECT

This article appears in the Sept. 3, 2004 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

The Coming Senate Battle: Open the Porter Goss File

Part 1, by Jeffrey Steinberg, with Michele Steinberg and Scott Thompson

In his damning book on the Bush-Cheney Administration, Worse Than Watergate, former Nixon White House General Counsel John W. Dean reported that Vice President Dick Cheney has been obsessed for decades with the mid-1970s Church and Pike Committees, whose pioneering work led to the first serious Congressional oversight of the intelligence community. As far as the Vice President is concerned, those investigations, and the Congressional oversight committees that emerged from the process, represented a dark moment, in which the powers of secret government were undermined. As Dean put it: "Cheney has long believed that Congress has no business telling Presidents what to do, particularly in national security matters."

Cheney's refusal to turn over a shred of paper from his White House Energy Task Force; his secret intelligence organization buried in the Pentagon bureaucracy; and his trips to CIA headquarters to stare down analysts who dared to challenge his Iraq WMD Big Lies, all underscore the Veep's obsession with government-by-secret-cabal.

It is no wonder that Cheney's choice as the new Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) is Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.). Goss not only presided over a vicious partisan coverup of the Iraq pre-war intelligence fraud�a fraud run out of Cheney's office�through his position as chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. Goss's own career as a 1960s-era Central Intelligence Agency Clandestine Service officer is a throwback to the pre-Church Committee, pre-Watergate days, when the intelligence community, under the Allen Dulles/James Angleton legacy, ran amok.

Playing Politics With National Security Sources in the U.S. intelligence community and the Congress identify three reasons that Cheney chose Goss for the DCI post, and is now intent on ramming his confirmation through the Senate immediately after Labor Day.

First, the White House is desperate to "plug the leaks" at the CIA. The Agency has been scapegoated by the White House and its Congressional toadies, like Goss and California Republican Duncan Hunter, for the 9@nd11 attacks and for the failure to find the so-called Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Senior career intelligence officers are furious, according to the sources, at the White House's blame game, and they do not intend to sit by and allow this propaganda scam to go unchallenged. The fact that evidence points to Cheney as the culprit behind the July 2003 leaking of the identity of CIA "non-official cover" officer Valerie Plame to columnist Robert Novak, only deepens the intelligence community's fury at the Bush White House. And Goss's personal role in attempting to prevent an independent counsel probe into the Plame leak just adds to the volatility of the issue.

The spy community knows that evidence easily accessible in the public domain reveals that the President, the Vice President, and the Attorney General repeatedly ignored CIA and FBI warnings about an imminent terrorist attack on U.S. soil in the Spring-Summer 2001, including the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing item, talking about al-Qaeda hijacking plots and surveillance of targets in Washington and New York. Likewise, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's recent report documented that the majority of intelligence community analysts disputed the Iraq WMD threat; and former DCI George Tenet told an audience at Georgetown University earlier this year that Iraq "never posed an imminent threat" to the United States�and he told Bush and Cheney that on repeated occasions.

When the CIA General Counsel rushed through approval of a book, Imperial Hubris, by a senior Agency counterterrorism analyst, writing anonymously, which tore into the Administration's failed Iraq and Afghanistan policies, Cheney and company moved to pre-empt further damaging material from surfacing from the Agency�by naming Goss. Goss's first mission will be to plug the leaks�at least through November.

Second, the Bush-Cheney campaign is growing worried that the President could lose the must-win state of Florida in November, and the Goss nomination is aimed at bolstering enthusiasm among the Cuban-American right-wing community in Miami for a second Bush-Cheney term. Goss is the darling of the southern Florida right wing, and has been, dating back to his CIA days from 1961-71, when he participated in the efforts to assassinate or overthrow Fidel Castro in Havana.

Third, and most important for Cheney, Goss is the personification of the rogue spook, serving at the pleasure of the President, and behind the back of the Congress and the American people. In Cheney's warped mind, Goss is going to turn the clock back to the bad-old-days before Watergate and intelligence oversight.

JM/WAVE and Mongoose In 1975, the Church Committee investigating the activities of the U.S. intelligence community issued its final report. Among the revelations contained in the multi-volume document were the first unclassified accounts of the CIA's program to assassinate Cuban dictator Fidel Castro. "United States government personnel plotted to kill Castro from 1960 to 1965," the report stated. "American underworld figures and Cubans hostile to Castro were used in these plots, and were provided encouragement and material support by the United States."

Those anti-Castro operations were run out of a large Miami CIA station, under the code name JM/WAVE. At the height of JM/WAVE, the station employed over 200 CIA officers, and ran a network of over 2,200 Cuban exiles. It maintained an armada of boats, for raids on Cuba, and a small fleet of aircraft for other missions. One sub-feature of the anti-Castro efforts, Operation Mongoose, involved assassination plots against the Cuban leader.

Porter Goss was a young CIA officer assigned to JM/WAVE. Goss had, by his own accounts, been recruited to the CIA while in his third year at Yale University. His two years of military service were, in all likelihood, actually CIA assignments. In 1961, Goss was officially brought into the CIA and sent to JM/WAVE. He later would continue to participate in the anti-Castro operations, based out of CIA stations in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico. Later, Goss was sent to London and then Paris, where he was involved in the infiltration of labor organizations, until he developed a near-fatal infection and was forced, officially, to retire from the spy world.

In his role in JM/WAVE, Goss served with some of the CIA's most hardened Cold Warriors, including Miami Station Chief Theodore G. Shackley, later a central figure in the Iran/Contra debacle; Felix Rodriguez, another leading Iran-Contra player; and Frank Sturgis, later of Watergate break-in infamy.

Indeed, from the Bay of Pigs and the Operation Mongoose Castro assassination plots of the 1960s, to the Watergate Plumbers Unit of the 1970s, to the Iran-Contra narco-financed insurgency of the 1980s, this circle of right-wing CIA operators and closely allied Cuban exiles, has represented an ugly stain on the American political landscape. Is this what Porter Goss brings to the table?

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence cannot avoid the details of Goss's CIA career, in deliberating on his nomination.

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