The CIA director's coat caught fire. Smoke rose from Allen Dulles's tan tweed jacket as he sat behind his desk, lighting his pipe, talking to a young Porter Goss. Goss was hoping to become a clandestine service officer. This was his final interview.
"And I thought, Oh my God, this is part of the test, this is the last test. Do I scream 'Fire'? Do I dump coffee on him? What do I do?" Goss told an interviewer in 2002. "And so, finally, during the next question -- as smoke was billowing out -- I just sort of stared at his coat with a look of alarm. And that's all that ever happened, and I never knew whether it was part of the test. But, anyway, I got the job."
In August, President Bush nominated Rep. Porter J. Goss (D-Fla.), a former spy, to head the CIA.
(Ron Edmonds -- AP)
|
| | | | | | | ___ Rep. Porter J. Goss Bio ___
Hometown: Sanibel, Fla.
Age: 65
Party: Republican
Family: Wife, Mariel; four children
Education: Yale University, 1960
Career: Former intelligence officer with the U.S. Army and the CIA
Political Highlights: U.S. House, 1989-present; chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; member of the House Rules Committee; member of the Select Committee for Homeland Security
• Goss's Web Site
| | | | | | | |
_____More From The Post_____
•
Goss Backed '95 Bill to Slash Intelligence (The Washington Post, Aug 24, 2004)
•
Democrats Urged Not to Fight Goss Nomination (The Washington Post, Aug 16, 2004)
•
Democrats Respond to Goss Nomination With Caution (The Washington Post, Aug 11, 2004)
•
Intelligence Insider Has Recently Displayed a More Combative Side (The Washington Post, Aug 11, 2004)
•
Bush Nominates Rep. Goss to Run CIA (The Washington Post, Aug 11, 2004)
_____Goss Profile_____
•
A Cloak But No Dagger (The Washington Post, May 18, 2002)
|
| |
Friday's Question:
| | |
|
More than 40 years later, Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) is being considered for another intelligence job, this time as the agency's chief. During his Senate confirmation hearings, set to start tomorrow, the former chairman of the House intelligence committee will face a different kind of test. The intelligence community, which failed to stop the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and to provide an accurate assessment of prewar Iraq, is by many accounts, in flames. For some observers, Goss's suitability for the job comes down to these questions:
Did Goss, as oversight chairman, see these failings and, if he did, how did he respond?
For a man who is often described as affable and straightforward, Goss, 65, is caught up in a complicated nomination. Amid proposals for intelligence reform, his job title and duties remain unclear. With a presidential election in seven weeks, his tenure is uncertain, and his hearings will take place in the turmoil of a political season. While supporters hail him as experienced and steady, critics assail him as too partisan and, like the young man who watched the CIA director's jacket burn, inclined to do nothing.
White-haired and with a patrician bearing, he is an insider's insider -- a former officer with Army intelligence and the CIA, and an eight-year veteran of the intelligence committee. While some point to his résumé as proof that he is part of the problem, others wave it to say that he's the solution.
"Porter Goss is uniquely qualified," said his friend, Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), who co-chaired with Goss the joint congressional inquiry into the intelligence community's performance surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks. "The position urgently needs the kind of leadership he can bring. He's the right person at the right time to do this job."
"It's totally insane," said the former spy and CIA critic Bob Baer of Goss's nomination. "He was hand in glove with [ex-CIA director George J.] Tenet on just about everything. . . . He has an unhealthy attachment to the past."
Baer said he once testified before Goss's committee: "It was a public gesture. Afterward he said, 'Great work,' like a politician. What he really meant to say was: 'If you don't shut your mouth, I'm gonna cut your throat.' "
Goss and his staff declined to be interviewed in the lead-up to his hearings. Although recently Goss has stepped up criticism of the agency, in 2002 he told a Washington Post reporter he would not use the word "failure" to describe the intelligence lapses before Sept. 11. "I don't like to see the left-wingers splattering mud on an agency that's done some very fine work. It demoralizes people taking the risk," he said.
Despite the controversy over his nomination, observers expect that Goss will be confirmed. Hill Democrats concede that they are reluctant to block his appointment, for fear of being accused of obstructing the war on terrorism. Republicans admire the eight-term congressman, who has served on the powerful House Rules Committee, and who counts former president George H.W. Bush, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Vice President Cheney among his friends.
Things tend to work out for Goss, he has noticed, attributing his success to deus ex machina, a Latin phrase that means, literally, "god from a machine." In the plays Goss studied as a classics major at Yale, a god would appear at the last minute like a lightning bolt to resolve a crisis.
"My whole life is just bumping from one thing to another," Goss told the Times of the Islands, a Florida Gulf Coast magazine, in the same interview in which he described Dulles's smoking jacket. His life has been, he said, a fortuitous chain, linked by twists of fate.
A Life of Secrets
Goss, a multimillionaire, grew up in Waterbury, Conn., in the type of old New England family where last names were given as first names. (A longtime friend described Goss's family as "rich," as opposed to his wife's, which was "filthy rich.") At Yale, he joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps and signed up with Army intelligence.
