This Knight-Ridder story says new CIA director Porter Goss is moving to make changes at the agency. That may be a good sign; the CIA needs dramatic reform and staffing is the key, not structure.
Porter Goss' initial moves as CIA director appear to herald a post-election purge at the already troubled spy agency, according to current and former top U.S. intelligence officials.Goss, a former Republican congressman, has put at least four former Capitol Hill Republican staffers into top positions in his CIA office and has given them broad authority to make personnel and restructuring decisions, the current and former intelligence officials said.
Goss, who was sworn in Sept. 24 to replace George Tenet, pledged during his confirmation hearings he would be a nonpartisan CIA director.
But the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said they were concerned by the partisan affiliation of Goss' team.
"If he has brought strongly partisan staff with him - and he has - that seems to call (Goss's pledge) into question," said another top official, who recently left the CIA.
A CIA spokesman, who asked to remain unnamed, said Goss has made no decisions on restructuring.
"We are not at the structural phase yet," the spokesman said. "These people ought to be given a little time. It's been less than a month since he's (Goss) been sworn in. That goes for some of the people he has brought with him."
He denied the reports up to 90 people will be ousted from their jobs, saying "I have heard no conversations to support any changes close to that number as of yet.
"It's kind of interesting that Mr. Goss was accused (in his confirmation hearings) of not being reform-minded enough" and is now being criticized for considering sweeping reforms of the agency, the spokesman added.
The charges of partisanship are absurd, if predictable. Only highly-trusted aides would come in with a new executive, and it's no surprise that Goss would have had few Democrats on his committee staff.
In any event, personnel changes are the only way to get long-term control of the CIA's problems, which include an internal insurgency that is trying even now to bring down the Bush administration.
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