Slow Evening on the Porter Goss Resignation

The stories about the resignation of CIA Director Porter Goss have more or less stopped for a few hours though various media types are chasing their tails as they help Bush with the spin. It's possible that late tonight we'll see the next crop of stories on the internet as they come out for the morning papers. Editor and Publisher has an interesting summary of comments made by various journalists during the day, including some comments that may be illuminating:

CIA Director Porter Goss, who had taken a strong stand against leaks to the press, suddenly resigned this afternoon, with the announcement coming from the White House shortly before 2 p.m.

Goss had served only 17 months in the job and no successor was named. President Bush gave no reason for his departure.

Asked on MSNBC why Goss really quit, The Washington Post's Dana Priest said, "You're going to have to wait for the morning paper for that. But I'll tell you, the agency is not on an even keel," as Goss claimed today. "His tenure has been very rough. He has not mended fences....Staffers he brought over with him [from Congress] created ill will with senior operatives who ended up resigning," she added.

"It's still very much an agency adrift. Goss did not really fight hard to keep the agency anywhere near what it used to be....Some people have said it is a shadow of its former self....They tried cosmetic changes, but really people there kept asking, what's his plan, what is the strategy, questions that have persisted to this day."

(snip)

Although the Associated Press suggested this was only "the latest move in a second-term shake-up of President Bush's team," Goss's name has surfaced lately in rumors related to indicted former Rep. Randy Cunningham. Some cable news commentators, following the announcement, suggested it could be tied, even if loosely, to the bribery scandal involving Cunningham and others. Others said the move had been in the works, if quietly, for weeks.

(snip)

The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol weighed in, on Fox News: "It wasn’t done in a routine way. I don’t think people — certainly people close to Goss did not expect this to happen. Senior congressmen and senators didn’t expect this to happen. I’m not sure the White House expected this to happen. …I think there were either serious disputes or some internal problem at the agency or some scandal conceivably involving an associate of Goss’. Who knows? Something that popped this week and that caused this sudden event this Friday."

The Bush Administration is famous now for multiple reasons for failure. We'll have to wait to see which method of failure is involved with Goss.

If Porter Goss or other CIA Bush appointees are involved in Hookergate, Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo or his associates at TPM Muckraker (Muckraker has Hookergate stories collected here) or Laura Rozen of War and Piece may have more in the coming days.