Bush announces Goss to head CIA
Senate must approve nomination
Tuesday, August 10, 2004 Posted: 12:29 PM EDT (1629 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush on Tuesday announced his choice to lead the CIA as U.S. Rep. Porter Goss, an eight-term Republican congressman who butted heads with former CIA Director George Tenet over the agency's intelligence gathering.
"He knows the CIA inside and out," Bush said at the start of his Rose Garden announcement. "He is the right man to lead this important agency at this critical moment in our nation's history."
Goss, 65, has been chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence since 1997. He had been described as a leading contender for the top job at the CIA.
Tenet announced his resignation in June. His top deputy, John McLaughlin, is serving as the acting director.
McLaughlin issued a written statement Tuesday congratulating Goss. "He is no stranger to the rigors and complexities of foreign intelligence in our democracy," McLaughlin said.
Bush also said Goss, who was an agent in the CIA's clandestine service from 1960 to 1971, "understands the importance of human intelligence. He was a CIA field officer on two continents."
And last week, the president highlighted the importance spies would play in his revamped intelligence gathering plan when he announced he would ask Congress to create the position of a national intelligence director as his principal adviser on countering terrorism.
"America faces determined enemies who train in many nations," Bush said Tuesday. "This threat is unprecedented, and to stop them from killing our citizens, we must have the best intelligence possible."
Bush said he looked forward to Goss' assistance in implementing recommendations from the 9/11 commission.
Yet Goss already has expressed dissent with some of those suggestions and the intelligence plan Bush laid out last week.
Namely, Goss has said, unlike Bush, he supports full budget authority for the national intelligence director, and he urged caution in even creating such a post.
Bush's nomination must have Senate approval before Goss could become the new CIA director, and there are early indications that his confirmation may encounter difficulties.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-West Virginia, vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said he was disappointed in Goss' nomination, his staff said Tuesday.
Last month, when the congressman's name was first mentioned in connection with the top CIA job, Rockefeller and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said Goss was too close to the intelligence community and was too partisan to be effective in the post.
However, fellow Floridian Sen. Bob Graham, a Democrat who once headed Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, praised Goss' nomination, saying that during the heightened state of alert in some parts of the country, the CIA should have a permanent leader.
Goss said Tuesday that he looked forward to the confirmation process.
He said he was "deeply honored" and "extremely grateful for the opportunity" the president had offered him.
"The essence of our intelligence capability is people, and we have some wonderful Americans doing a great job," Goss said. "I used to be part of them when I worked for the CIA. I'm very proud to be associated with them again, and I look forward to the challenges of the future."
Administration sources had earlier indicated it was unlikely that the president would move to find a replacement for Tenet during the election season to avoid a potentially contentious confirmation process.
Goss represents a district in southwest Florida and is not running for re-election in the fall.
In June, Goss' committee attached a scathing report to an intelligence appropriations bill passed by the House. The report called the CIA's human intelligence gathering apparatus "dysfunctional" and adverse to change, and charged that its intelligence analysts were timid and lacked proper focus.
In response, Tenet fired off a letter to Goss, characterizing the committee's criticisms as "ill-informed" and "absurd."
Goss had planned to retire from Congress at the end of his last term, but Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney asked him to remain. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R- Illinois, arranged for a change in House rules that limit committee service to allow Goss to stay on the committee and to chair it.
CNN's Jill Dougherty, Ed Henry, Joe Johns and Suzanne Malveaux contributed to this report