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The Goss nomination was debated on the PBS News Hour with Jim Lehreron August 10, 2004. Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee (and Republican) Pat Roberts, author James Bamford, former CIA director Stansfield Turner and former CIA Analyst Ray McGovern participated. I was most impressed with what Ray McGovern had to say.
RAY McGOVERN: He's most definitely not the man for this job, but I'd like to associate myself with Admiral Turner's remarks. There are these drug-free zones around schools. There really should be a yellow sign around the Langley Headquarters of CIA, "Politicians may go no further." If there is any key problem with intelligence over the last several years, it's politicization. And people who grew up in the heavily politicized environment of Congress are ipso facto very poor candidates, as Walter has said, to being DCI.
There is also the matter of Porter Goss's record. Because I have this excellent filing system, I picked out a Walter Pincus Washington Post article from 19 June '97. And this is his committee reporting that U.S. Intelligence has limited analytic capabilities and an uncertain commitment and capability to collect human intelligence. The panel found that the community is lacking in analytic depth, breadth and expertise and foreign language skills. Now, we all know that to have been the case over these last couple years.
JIM LEHRER: That was 1997?
RAY McGOVERN: This was seven years ago. Now, no one has more authority or power than the head of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to fix these problems. My question is: It's not the Oversight Committee, it's the "overlooked committee." He did nothing. He has no managerial experience.
JIM LEHRER: What about the idea that he comes from within the CIA and as a consequence will be better equipped than most to do something about it? Do you disagree with that?
RAY McGOVERN: That's the other disqualifier. I served under nine DCI's, okay, and actually I have written a chapter in a book being published by the Eisenhower Foundation. And I make the point that service in Congress where the art of compromise is necessary is antithetical to service as an intelligence officer where the science of seeking truth is necessary. So Congress, that's one point.
Coming from within the agency has not been a good experience. Alan Dulles is a good example of that because in the end he could not separate these operations out from the real intelligence, Bay of Pigs, for example. Richard Helms came from inside the agency and was not able, not able during Vietnam, to tell Lyndon Johnson that there were twice as many enemy under-arms as the military and McPhee were spouting out, and his reason was to protect the agency. So when you grow up within the agency, to me that's an automatic disqualifier.
When Senator Roberts pointed out, in response, that the Senate Intelligence Committee "with all of the differences that we had, and we had a bunch" was nevertheless able to craft a 511-page report that documents what "most believed really outlines what was wrong with the 2002 national intelligence estimate," McGovern countered:
...At the end of that committee, their final report left out all the information having to do with what the president of the United States was told prior to 9/11. The White House forbade that from being in the final report. Eleanor Hill, the executive director of that committee remonstrated loudly.
Porter Goss gave in to the White House, and so that report was ipso facto, incomplete, because it contained lots of stuff, but nothing on what the president was told before 9/11. That's proof positive to me that you've got a partisan person here who will do the bidding of the White House.
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