CIA Director Goss resigns
Bush announces departure after short term

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12646394/

Updated: 2:00 p.m. ET May 5, 2006

WASHINGTON - CIA Director Porter Goss is resigning, President Bush said Friday.

Bush called Goss’ tenure one of transition. “He has led ably,” Bush said from the Oval Office. “He has a five-year plan to increase the analysts and operatives.”

Goss, a former congressman, had directed the spy agency since September 2004.

Bush said that Goss has “helped make this country a safer place.”

“We’ve got to win the war on terror,” Bush added.

Goss, for his part, said that “I would like to report to you that the agency is back on a very even keel and sailing well.”

The CIA has come in for harsh criticism in recent years, not only for questionable prewar intelligence on Iraq but also in connection with the failure of it and a host of other federal agencies to coordinate information closely in connection with the terrorist threat.

Questions about the CIA’s performance in connection with Iraq involved mostly George Tenet, Goss’s predecessor.

Last fall, Goss defended his agency’s track record and insisted “we know more than we’re able to say publicly” about terror chiefs Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The al-Qaida leaders haven’t been found “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,” Goss said in a November interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“We’re applying a lot of efforts to find out where they are.” He insisted that the CIA knows “a good deal more” about the men “than we’re able to say publicly.”

Shake-up speculation
Prior to the announcement, there had been speculation that Bush might make further changes within the White House.

Bush’s new chief of staff, Joshua Bolten, has made several changes since taking over last month.

Recently, longtime Bush adviser and confidant Karl Rove had the policy-making portion of his portfolio taken away so he could focus on the midterm elections and White House press secretary Scott McClellan announced his resignation. McClellan has been replaced by Fox News commentator Tony Snow.

Replacing McClellan with Snow gave the White House an experienced television personality, who at times had been critical of the president, as the public face of the White House.

McClellan’s last briefing at the White House was Friday. His last day isn’t until next week, but the president is traveling in Florida the first part of the week, meaning that McClellan will be briefing on the road.

Rove was allowed to keep his deputy chief of staff title, but was stripped of day-to-day oversight of policy coordination. That job was given to Joel Kaplan, Bolten’s former No. 2 when he was budget director.

Bush also named Rob Portman, a former six-term Republican congressman from Ohio who now serves as U.S. trade representative, to replace Bolten at the head of the Office of Management and Budget.

The vacant job of domestic policy adviser has not yet filled.

Other changes that have been expected included changes in the White House lobbying office run by Candida Wolff and the expected departure of communications chief Nicolle Wallace, whose husband recently moved to New York. Officials have also done little to discourage speculation that Treasury Secretary John Snow is leaving.