CIA Director Goss Is Interviewed on ABC's Good Morning America

NOVEMBER 29, 2005

SPEAKERS: PORTER GOSS, DIRECTOR, CIA

CHARLES GIBSON, ABC ANCHOR

[*]

GIBSON: I had a chance to talk with the present director, Porter Goss, yesterday in the operations center. 

A couple of things to note: Number one, you'll see some red lights flashing in the operations center. That means there's someone in the room that does not have security clearance. In this case namely me. 

It is interesting that Director Goss has to walk a fine line, because he wants to give you a sense of the agency's mission but at the same time, obviously, cannot give away any secrets. 

Here's our conversation. 

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GIBSON (on camera): Mr. Director, give me some idea of how you want to change this place, what your vision for it is and how it's going to be different, say, five years from now. 

GOSS: I think I want a leaner headquarters. A little less regulation, less red tape disappear. 

And I want to see a greater focus and understanding of the mission overseas. The vision of an overseas operating team is the vision we're trying to portray here. And we're getting there. 

Now, we're going to take a lot of young people and it's going to take a number of years to build that cadre up. But we're doing innovative things and putting people overseas in different ways than we've ever done before. It's a new game. 

GIBSON (voice-over): We sat down for a conversation in the CIA operation center, a classified room rarely seen by outsiders. 

(on camera): If something goes really wrong in the world the call that you get comes from this room, I would imagine. 

GOSS: Good likelihood of that, yes. 

GIBSON: What's the call you most dread? 

GOSS: I think the call I most dread is another attack on the United States in a way we did not anticipate; that we missed something. 

GIBSON: Does it keep you awake at night? 

GOSS: It does from time to time. Yes, it does. 

There's another part of this and that is it's not just terrorism. We're a global organization and we're responsible for what's going on around the globe -- eyes and ears on it. 

GIBSON: What did you wish you knew more about that you don't know? 

GOSS: What I wish I knew more about now was how to penetrate into some of the sanctuary areas. They can be in harsh terrain that is hard to manage, or they can be in the heart of a city, in a ghetto or a slum area, where people don't regularly go and things can be going wrong. 

Knowing how to find those places and get in and penetrate them I think is going to be the hardest part of this business. 

GIBSON: Just in the last 24 hours I asked a number of people, "How do you judge the agency? And what's the litmus test to judge the agency's effectiveness now?" And they all said to me in differing forms, "Why can't they find two men, bin Laden or al-Zarqawi?" 

GOSS: Well, primarily because they don't want us to find them and they're going to great lengths to make sure we don't find them. 

And I assure you we're employing a lot of efforts to find out where they are. And I don't want to get into the depth and the details, but we know a good deal more about bin Laden and Zarqawi and Zawahiri than we're able to say publicly. 

GIBSON: Let me ask you about torture. You said the other day, "The CIA does not do torture." Correct? 

GOSS: That is correct. 

GIBSON: How do you define it? 

GOSS: Well, I define torture probably the way most people would: in the eyes of the beholder. What we do does not come close because torture, in terms of inflicting pain or something like that, physical pain or causing a disability, those kinds of things that probably would be a common definition for most Americans, sort of, you know it when you see it, we don't do that because it doesn't get what you want. 

We do debriefings because debriefings are the nature of our business is to get information. And we do all that. And we do it in a way that does not involve torture because torture is counterproductive. 

GIBSON: We reported in the past two weeks about having talked to a number of people who have worked and did work in this agency about six progressive techniques, each one harsher than the last, to get terrorists to talk, including things like long-term standing up, sleep deprivation, exposure for long periods of time to cold rooms or something called water boarding, which involves cellophane over the face and a water being poured on an individual. Do those things take place? 

GOSS: We just simply don't...

GIBSON: You know what water boarding is, though, right?

GOSS: I know what a lot of things are... 

GIBSON: Does that come under the heading of torture? 

GOSS: I don't know. 

GIBSON: Well, under your definition, that you just gave me, of inflicting pain? 

GOSS: Let me put it this way: I'm not going to comment on any individual techniques that anybody has brought forward as an allegation or has dreamed up or anything like that. 

What we do, as I said many times, is professional, is lawful, it yields good results and it is not torture. 

GIBSON: There have also been stories in the press in recent weeks about a covert prison system or secret prisons, some of which may exist in Eastern Europe, for the holding of suspected terrorists. Why do we need that? 

GOSS: We're fighting a war on terror. We're doing quite well in it. 

Inevitably we are going to have to capture some terrorists and inevitably they are going to have to have some due process and inevitably that is going to happen and it's going to be done lawfully and under all of the law and order and protections of due process that this country affords. 

GIBSON: Why should people believe in or trust the CIA? 

GOSS: Well, we are perhaps the gold standard, by any measure, in terms of human intelligence. 

We don't get it right every time. But I don't think there's anybody who can come close. 

GIBSON: But the task that you have is really, it seems to me, to restore or to win back public confidence that this agency is as good as everyone wants it to be. 

GOSS: It's the old story of the airplane landing successfully time after time after time and the one time it lands and has a blowout or an accident that's the news. 

You can argue it. But I think when you get through at the end of the day, we are the preeminent human intelligence collection agency on the globe. 

(END VIDEOTAPE)

END