The problems inside the CIA were clearly running against Goss. The turnover in high-level directorate of Operations personnel was an indicator that Goss was failing. John Negroponte had also discussed Goss' failings with the Prresident. But the kicker was the FBI investigation and parallel probe by the CIA's inspector general into the connection with Wade ("Duke" Cunningham's principle briber) and the hooker-gate situation that finally brought the decision to a head. It was when the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board took notice of those events on top of the many other problems in the Intelligence Community that Goss was asked for his resignation. Notice that this was not a result of the White House staff keeping track of the effectiveness of Bush's subordinates. This was an example of an institutional organization needed because of the secrecy of the Intelligence functions. The Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board did the job normally done by an effective manager.
The board, which includes longtime Bush confidant and former Commerce Secretary Don Evans, joined in the growing chorus inside and outside the CIA calling for Goss' ouster, persuading Bush to act, sources said.Yeah. Goss finds his failure a mystery. Quele surprise. Let's look at this surprise.
The result was the awkward Oval Office announcement Friday at which neither Goss nor Bush gave a specific reason for Goss' return to Florida. Goss told CNN yesterday his resignation was "just one of those mysteries."
John Negroponte the Director of National Intelligence, had already told the President about how bad Goss' performance at CIA was. The extremely high turnover of top Directorate of Operations personnel showed what his subordinates thought of his effectiveness. (This kind of turnover is a dead giveaway to bad management.)
But when the FBI and the CIA Inspector General opened investigations into the strange promotion of Foggo and the Cunningham-Wade related hookergate situation, it was too much even for the overly tolerent Bush.
Someone in the White House apparently pushed through the famed Bush avoidance of bad news and told Bush how bad things really were. As a result, he had to react, and Goss is gone. This appears to me to be the first "firing" by Bush since he tool office. He wouldn't have done it on his own, and most agencies in government do not have a supervisory Board like the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. This is a special instutional arranangement required because of the classified nature of the functions of Intelligence agencies.
I'd be very interested in how bad the information reaching the White House staff was and from how many different sources before they bearded the dreaded Bush in his den and informed him he had to act on Goss.
Several important problems in the Bush administration appear to be the appointment of people unqualified to perform the job they are appointed to, and the inability to conduct effective policy operations in the White House. They also don't do a good job of holding appointees responsible for the jobs they are appointed to until the media gets involved (see FEMA and Michael Brown.) It seems to me that each of these are areas that could be studied by academics to determine what the Bush people are leaving out when they make their decisions, and the reasons they don't consider those items. Do we have any Universities out there who might take me on to study these things? Seems like there are several Ph.D. theseses in this subject. I'll work cheap.
E-mail me with offers, OK? (grin)
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