Once a young spook, Goss eyes a CIA return
His admirers praise him as a thoughtful, collaborative colleague who knows the intelligence business inside and out. His detractors brand him a partisan whose close ties to the CIA and the White House helped insulate the intelligence community from needed reform. This much is clear: After years of relative obscurity, Rep. Porter Goss, a Florida Republican and silver-haired grandfather of 11, now finds himself in the spotlight as President Bush's pick to run the CIA.
Nominated last month to become the nation's 19th director of central intelligence, Goss faces Senate confirmation hearings this month. Among the topics will be his seven-year record as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
Goss is one of a mere handful of lawmakers with a background in intelligence. During the 1960s, he spent a decade working with Army intelligence and then with the CIA. The normally talkative congressman has said little about his time as a covert operative, which took him to the Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Britain. He was based in Miami during the early 1960s, when scores of case officers were focused on destabilizing Fidel Castro's regime in Cuba, a CIA effort President Lyndon Johnson once called "a damned Murder Inc. in the Caribbean."
"Porter Goss was a solid guy, very affable," recalls Mike Ackerman, who served briefly with him at CIA headquarters. Ackerman shares the concern of some Democrats about putting a politician in charge of the agency. But he also believes Goss's insider knowledge may work to his advantage. Says Ackerman: "It's going to be tougher to bamboozle him." -David E. Kaplan and Kevin Whitelaw
This story appears in the September 13, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.