President George W. Bush announced Goss's resignation with the outgoing CIA chief sitting beside him in the Oval Office. "He has led ably," the president said. "He has a five-year plan to increase the analysts and operatives."

Bush also praised Goss for helping to "make this country a safer place." And Goss, a former veteran Republican congressman from Florida and long-time Bush loyalist, was also upbeat and on-message. "I would like to report to you that the agency (CIA) is back on a very even keel and sailing well," he said.

But no amount of spin could disguise the fact that Goss was the latest casualty of new White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten's ambitious plan shake up and revitalize an administration hammered by $70 a barrel plus oil prices, rising casualties and violence in Iraq and tumbling opinion poll ratings.

Goss's resignation was announced the same day that White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan gave his last press briefing. He is being replaced by veteran Fox News commentator Tony Snow. And even Karl Rove, the president's chief political strategist has given up the hands-on detailed control of administration policy he had enjoyed since the beginning of the president's second term of office.

Goss had the vision of transforming the CIA into a lean, mean intel machine that would focus on the war on terror, put thousands more human agents into the field and provide the U.S. armed forces, especially the Army and Marine forces fighting the Sunni insurgency in Iraq, with real time intelligence that could be of far greater operational use to them.

Goss had a background serving in the CIA back in the 1960s, and he had long been regarded on Capitol Hill as one of the most knowledgeable and respected figures in Congress in dealing with intelligence issues. He also enjoyed the president's full confidence. And expectations were high when he got the job. Unlike so many of his predecessors, he was given a literal blank check in terms of funding and resources by a sympathetic, ask-no-questions GOP majority in Congress. He pushed through an ambitious five year plan that -- on paper -- will transform the agency.

However, Goss leaves office with no striking intelligence achievements to his credit, the most remarked upon structural and cultural problems within the CIA still crippling its effectiveness, and a senior staff far more demoralized and stripped of influence than when he arrived.

Despite his long experience in Congress, Goss had never had any serious management experience in government or out of it. He proved a very weak administrator at the CIA and rapidly alienated many senior staffers. He was confident from his own service in the agency that he knew street-smart details of operational realities, but his own espionage experience was three and a half decades ago at the height of the Cold War.

His arrival and early heavy hand set off so much personal and political feuding at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia that agency insiders told reporters was turning the venerable, globe-spanning institution into a soap opera.

Goss tried to ride above the turmoil. Newsweek magazine reported that in a private question and answer session with agency employees on Sept. 22, 2005, Goss was asked why veteran agency officers were resigning in numbers unprecedented for since the Carter administration. He replied, "I don't do personnel."

The answer was reminiscent of the high-handed, confident, publicly abrasive way Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has repeatedly shrugged off criticism of his conduct of the Iraq war. But Goss did not prove as fortunate as Rumsfeld.

"That answer killed him. It destroyed his credibility," a source with close agency ties told UPI Friday. "What else is there for a CIA chief to do? The job is all about choosing the right personnel and evaluating them accurately."

Goss also had an adversarial relationship with the media, despite the greatly increased sense of national responsibility that pervaded the nation, including the media following the mega-terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Goss purged senior managers from the agency but he did not appear to have a firm grasp on veteran senior staff and their intelligence assets. Critics charged him with relying too much on his old inner circle of congressional staffers. In his Sept. 22, question and answer session, Newsweek reported, Goss was asked why he had brought to Langley with him a former congressional staffer who, as a junior CIA officer, once got into trouble for shoplifting. He replied that everyone made mistakes. Senior staff compared that answer with Goss's relentless criticisms of their own more impressive careers and were not impressed, agency insiders told UPI.

Goss clashed with senior officials in the agency's Directorate of Operations. His supporters told the press and sympathetic lawmakers in Congress that the officials had been opposing Goss's reform efforts. But in the private world of the U.S. intelligence community, this reaction was widely seen as irresponsible, and as a lack of loyalty by Goss towards the troops he led.

Goss could not even retain the confidence of senior staff he had promoted himself. He made Robert Richer deputy director of operations. Richer resigned less than a year later and later informed the Senate Select Committee on intelligence that he had told Goss to his face in a private meeting on Sept. 22, 2005 that the CIA director was out of touch with his own agency.

More veteran Middle East officers resigned before their retirement or career stints required during Goss's brief tenure than under any previous CIA director since Adm. Stansfield Turner, who held the job for President Jimmy Carter.

related report

Women may replace Goss at CIA

Washington (UPI) May 08 - J Porter Goss's resignation as CIA director may open the way for increased cooperation between the agency and other elements of the U.S. intelligence community, intelligence insiders have told UPI.

The sources said that one of the frontrunners to succeed Goss, who resigned Friday, Mary Margaret Graham, the widely respected deputy to Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte. Graham is a 28-year veteran of the CIA who currently serves as deputy director of national intelligence for collection. She has the extensive leadership and management experience within the agency that Goss lacked and is widely respected within the agency.

If Graham gets the job, she is likely to give far greater priority to cooperating with Negroponte in his efforts to break down institutional barriers to operational cooperation and intelligence-sharing within the enormous, but sprawling and historically poorly coordinated U.S. intelligence community, the sources said.

Another front-running candidate to succeed Goss, the sources said, was Fran Townsend, currently President George W. Bush's advisor on homeland security. Ms. Townsend was previously deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism.

Both Graham and Townsend are given high marks for their management skills and ability to work well with their colleagues -- two key areas where Goss was widely criticized for dropping the ball. Either of them would be the first female head of the CIA in its almost 60 year history. Whoever gets the high pressure and controversial post, they will inherit an agency with many secret successes to its credit over the past four and a half years in the war on terrorism.

The agency also now enjoys a boost in its budgets and resources unprecedented since the hey-day of the Cold War.

But the next CIA director will also inherit an agency is still struggling to effectively penetrate the Sunni insurgency in Iraq and that, some critics say, is paying too little attention increasingly militant network of Shiite militias across southern Iraq.

CIA morale has been reeling despite increased budgets over the past year for two reasons. The first was Goss' abrasive, hands-on management style that alienated many veteran senior staffers and drove many of them out of the service.

The second was the reorganization of the U.S. national security services that took the key position of "vicar" or senior coordinator of all the U.S. intelligence agencies away from the CIA director for the first time in its history. That position went to former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte.

Negroponte has been struggling to streamline cooperation between the different agencies in the U.S. intelligence community. Intelligence insiders give him high marks for his efforts but say they have been slowed down by the determination of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, backed by Vice President Dick Cheney to keep resources and information from the Pentagon's various intelligence organizations primarily under their control.

The failure of al-Qaida and other extreme Islamist groups so far to being able to repeat their success in the terror atrocities of Sept. 11, 2001 is the most striking evidence that the CIA has in fact been doing far better in aging its secret war to defend the American people than its many detractors on both right and left give it credit for.

Cooperation between the CIA and the FBI in particular is said to be far better than it was before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and before the USA Patriot Act removed many of the institutional barriers that made crucial intelligence sharing between America's chief domestic and international security and intelligence agencies almost impossible.

But the agency is said still to have along way to go in recruiting the Arabic and Farsi-speaking field officers and analysts, and the additional number of web-savvy open-source analysts it still badly needs to keep on top of global threats and challenges to the United States and the American people.

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