Porter Goss and the CIA

[Ron Ecker]

It's too bad they didn't leave Goss on the job and let him completely destroy the agency. What a loss that would have been!

Over the years the CIA has proven competent only in assassinations, the overthrow of governments, and drug running, to the world's detriment in every case. At intelligence gathering, its purported original mission, it sucks. Probably from lack of practice, if that's a valid excuse.

By all accounts Rumsfeld's Pentagon is bulging at the seams with intelligence outfits, some that I'm sure we don't even know about, and with 80 percent of the nation's intelligence budget. And now Negroponte is building an intelligence empire of his own. How damn much do we need?

The CIA has served its purpose, or I should say has never served its purpose, and should be "scattered to the winds," as someone reportedly once said. But of course it won't be. This post is a daydream.

Edited May 7, 2006 by Ron Ecker

[John Simkin]

Namebase entry for Porter Goss:

http://www.namebase.org/xgor/Porter-J-_28r_2Dfl_29-Goss.html

Assn. Former Intelligence Officers. Membership Directory. 1996

Assn. Former Intelligence Officers. Periscope 1988-SP (20-1)

Assn. Former Intelligence Officers. Periscope 1988-SU (24)

Bamford,J. Body of Secrets. 2001 (457, 466-7, 475)

Coll,S. Ghost Wars. 2004 (424)

Council on Foreign Relations. Membership Roster. 2004

Intelligence (Paris) 1997-02-10 (17)

Intelligence (Paris) 2000-02-28 (20)

Lewis,C. The Buying of the Congress. 1998 (227, 257)

Mackenzie,A. Secrets: The CIA's War at Home. 1997 (200)

NameBase NewsLine 1997-01 (6)

Nation 1995-03-13 (333)

Nation 1997-05-19 (24)

New York Times 2001-01-20 (A16)

New York Times 2004-06-25 (A12)

New York Times 2004-08-13 (A17)

New York Times 2004-09-22 (A18)

New York Times 2004-10-01 (A11)

New York Times 2004-12-29 (A1, 16)

New York Times 2005-08-26 (A12)

Washington Post 1991-10-13 (A11)

Washington Post 1992-08-22 (D5)

Washington Post 1999-09-07 (A8)

Washington Post 2000-02-11 (A39)

Washington Times 1994-05-27 (A12)

Washington Times 1996-08-01 (A17)

Who's Who in America. 1992-1993

[Shanet Clark]

Goss gutted the agency, decimated the top ranks, antagonized the leadership and fired

a top official as a scapegoat in the leak case.

Now he is out.

The former head of NSA is in...

................................................................. why do I hear a clicking on my phone?

links on Hayden issues

http://apnews.myway.com//article/20060507/D8HF48L80.html

http://apnews.myway.com//article/20060507/D8HF49IO0.html

This looks like the issue where COngressional Republicans will make their break

with the White House. It will also be the official discussion of domestic wiretapping.

Turns out Negroponte can't do all the things he wants to do without his own man at CIA.

As I predicted, the NID is an expensive new layer of bureaucracy, and hinders co-operation.......

Rumsfeld and the Defense Department want to hold onto Intelligence as their baby,

and they think the CIA is a bunch of liberals who don't "get with the program"

The public airing of these issues is a great boon to critical thinkers and the political opposition.

Obviously something is seriously wrong if Bush has to replace two CIA directors in two years,

and during an election year, this discussion will have serious "blowback" potential ---

[John Simkin]

Blair is in serious trouble in the UK. There are moves within the Labour Party to oust him within the next couple of months. The only thing that would stop this happening is if the UK is involved in a serious international crisis. Jack Straw had made it clear that he would resign if Iran was bombed. While Straw was foreign secretary, Blair would have found it difficult to support Bush. The situation is now very different. If Bush bombs Iran it will probably lead to a war in the Middle East. With troops in Iraq, there would be no way that the UK could withdraw from the region. At the same time, it would be difficult to remove Blair during the conflict.

Two years before the Iraq War in 2003, Tony Blair moved the then foreign secretary, Robin Cook, to the post of leader of the commons. Cook was known to be against US expansionism (he claimed he wanted to follow an ethical foreign policy). History has been repeated by Blair’s decision to move the foreign secretary Jack Straw to the post of the leader of the commons.

[David Clark]

Two years before the Iraq War in 2003, Tony Blair moved the then foreign secretary, Robin Cook, to the post of leader of the commons. Cook was known to be against US expansionism (he claimed he wanted to follow an ethical foreign policy). History has been repeated by Blair’s decision to move the foreign secretary Jack Straw to the post of the leader of the commons.

It wouldn't be the first time that the Bush administration has played an important role in persuading Tony Blair to sack his foreign secretary. It was little discussed at the time, but Robin Cook's demotion in 2001 also followed hostile representations from Washington and private expressions of doubt in Downing Street about his ability to work with a Republican administration. Again, there may have been other factors, but of those suggested at the time, none seems convincing. Last week's reshuffle helps to put the episode in a new, revealing context.

The first signs of what lay ahead came in the run-up to the 2000 presidential elections, when telegrams from the British embassy in Washington started to report an attitude of suspicion towards the Blair government on the part of those likely to fill senior positions in an incoming Bush administration. People such as Dick Cheney and Richard Perle were expressing scepticism about Labour's reliability, citing the presence at senior level of ministers who had supported nuclear disarmament and criticised US foreign policy in the cold war.

There was little reason to suppose these telegrams had made any impact until a relatively small incident at Labour's annual conference. Like all cabinet ministers, Cook was commissioned to write a "pre-manifesto" paper, setting out Labour's provisional second-term agenda and illustrating how the government intended to build on its achievements. One proposal was to appoint a special envoy to campaign for global abolition of the death penalty. Switching Britain's position to support abolitionism was one of Cook's early foreign-policy decisions, and he thought that a special envoy would be an uncontroversial, but useful, way of promoting the government's policy.

Blair had other ideas. On the day the proposal become public, Jonathan Powell and other Downing Street officials warned Cook that it was unacceptable and must never be mentioned again. The reason? The only one given was that a special envoy would inevitably indulge in "finger wagging" at America, one of the biggest users of capital punishment, and therefore strain diplomatic relations with Washington. Under no circumstances would the prime minister countenance this, especially under a Republican administration. The Foreign Office could continue to support abolition of the death penalty, but not in any particularly active sense.

Cook was aware of his vulnerability, especially after the Florida chads ended up hanging in the wrong direction. He sought to replicate the strong relationship he had enjoyed with Madeleine Albright by cultivating her successor, Colin Powell. Indeed, the two men established a relationship of mutual respect even before Bush was sworn in. But in a foretaste of Powell's own marginalisation, this cut little ice. As Cook revealed in his diaries, the neoconservatives never dropped their hostility to him and eventually got their wish.

The treatment of Straw seems uncannily reminiscent, but the issue of Iran is of a different order of seriousness to anything Cook was grappling with five years ago. There is a pressing need for Blair to tell Bush what Attlee had the guts to tell Truman in the Korean war: that a decision to breach the nuclear threshold would encourage proliferation and make America an outcast from the community of civilised nations. He may think it clever strategy to put pressure on Tehran by keeping all options open, but the Iranians are not the only ones who need deterring.

Once again, Blair seems willing to put the wishes of the US government before those of the British people. That should be reason enough for wanting him out of office as soon as possible.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/st...1769900,00.html

[Shanet Clark]

The Atrocities of a Pale Rider-

John D. Negroponte

by

Celerino Castillo 3rd

posted at DrugWar.com

Feb. 17, 2005

John Dimitri Negroponte

The above biblical quotation is the only way I can describe John Dimitri Negroponte because of the atrocities he's previously committed around the world.

From 1971 to 1973, Negroponte was the officer-in charge for Vietnam at the National Security Council under Henry Kissinger. During that period, former DEA Michael Levine was conducting undercover operations in Saigon, Thailand, and Cambodia where our government was smuggling heroin into the U.S. Our government was utilizing caskets and body bags of those "Killed In Action" to smuggled the heroin.

From 1981-1985, Negroponte was U.S. Ambassador to Honduras, where he illegally assisted the contra war and, most devastating, helped the Reagan administration in "disappearing" close to 300 political opponents in classic death squad fashion. He supervised the creation of the El Aguacate air base, which the Contras used as a secret detention and torture center. In August 2001, excavations at the base discovered 185 corpses, including two American missionaries. In May 1982, a nun, Sister Laetitia Bordes went on a fact-finding delegation to Honduras to investigate the whereabouts of thirty Salvadoran nuns who fled to Honduras in 1981. Negroponte claimed the embassy knew nothing. But in 1996, a U.S. newspaper interviewed Negroponte's predecessor, Jack Binns. Binns said that a group of Salvadorans, among whom was Bordes, who had been captured on April 22, 1981, and savagely tortured by the Honduran Secret Police, and then later thrown out of helicopters, alive. Negroponte turned a deliberate blind eye to a murderous pattern of political killings. He orchestrated the famous death squad Battalion 316, which used shock and suffocation devices in interrogations. Prisoners were often kept naked and when no longer useful, killed and buried in unmarked graves. We have seen similar pictures of those atrocities committed by our service men and women in Iraq.

From 1989 to September 1993, he was also ambassador to Mexico where he directed our U. S. intelligence services in assisting the war against the Zapatista rebels in Chiapas. Furthermore, he was there obstructing the war on [some] drugs. Seven Mexican drug agents were gunned down in an ambush by 100 members of the Mexican army on the payroll of a drug cartel; Negroponte dismissed the slaughter as "a regrettable incident." The slaughter had been videotaped by the DEA from another plane, which had also been strafed by the army unit.

Ironically enough, I was stationed in Vietnam as a combat soldier at the same time Negroponte was assigned to Vietnam. It was there I saw some of my brothers laid low from heroin overdose. It was also there, that I promised myself that if I survived that war, I would initiate my own personal war against drug trafficking. In 1979, I became one of the very few Latinos DEA agents.

From 1985 to 1991, I was assigned to Honduras, Guatemala, Belize and El Salvador. As one of two DEA agents that covered those countries, I observed that our U.S. government was complicit in drug trafficking and human rights violations. The area was rife with rebellion, gunrunning, and a perception that communism was on the move towards our back yards. One of my job descriptions was to train members of their military intelligence on the interdiction of drugs. However, most of my time was spent assisting the CIA in training the death squads. We were utilizing CIA contract agents from different parts of South America, specifically Venezuela and Argentina. In reality, Central America became one huge country, which allowed the death squads to overflow into each other. Mario Sandoval-Alarcon, best known as the godfather of the death squads and creator of the notorious death squad, "La Mano Blanca" ran all death squads. Sandoval was so loved by Ronald Reagan that he got a private invitation to, and attended, Reagan's inauguration.

At the same time, we had a guerilla movement known as the Contras operating against the Sandinistas' Nicaraguan government. Honduras and El Salvador became bases for the U.S. support of the right wing Contras. They unleashed a sadistic "scorched earth" campaign, basing itself on the murderous theory that the only way to combat the leftist guerrillas' resistance was to "empty the sea" in which the guerillas swam. Thus these death squads set about committing genocide against the indigenous population. The same blue prints that were used in Vietnam were implemented in Central America and once again, "worked." There are hundreds of secret cemeteries all over Central America, enough to us keep digging for another 10 years. There is no doubt that these same blueprints will be used in Iraq.

In Honduras, I saw first hand how Negroponte and General Alvarez committed some of the worst human rights violations ever committed against humanity in the Western Hemisphere. In 1994, the Honduran Human Rights Commission charged Negroponte personally with several human rights abuses.

President G.W. Bush appointed Negroponte as ambassador to Iraq with the "Salvador Option" in hand. The Salvador Option is a blueprint of the Phoenix Program [a murderous assasination program that killed at least 40,000 people without trial] that was utilized in Vietnam. And know it is being implemented in Iraq.

Today, President Bush has named Negroponte, as headhunter, Director of National Intelligence. He is now in charge of all intelligence, including that of the Pentagon.

God help us in saving our world.

As I've stated in the past, this country will get worse before it gets better, if it gets better. I am now capable of feeling deeply in my blood when an injustice has been committed. I've risked my life to demonstrate what I believe to be real- that is that an armed struggle (with pen in hand) is in order for those who are struggling in keeping their freedoms here at home. I've now become a veteran of my third, and perhaps most dangerous war, the war against the criminals in my own government.

[Michael Hogan]

"Look out kid...They keep it all hid...."

This, of course, is pretty common knowledge by now, but Daniel Hopsicker gives his take on Porter Goss in an article dated May 6, 2006.

http://www.madcowprod.com/

Edited May 9, 2006 by Michael Hogan

[Michael Hogan]

I sort of like replying to my own post......

Porter Goss recently (5/6/06) spoke to the graduates of Tiffin University in Ohio. He said:

"If I were speaking to graduating CIA case officers I would advise them,

Admit nothing, deny everything, and make counter-accusations."

And to think they fired this guy!

[Shanet Clark]

I sort of like replying to my own post......

Porter Goss recently (5/6/06) spoke to the graduates of Tiffin University in Ohio. He said:

"If I were speaking to graduating CIA case officers I would advise them,

Admit nothing, deny everything, and make counter-accusations."

And to think they fired this guy!

I've heard that phrase before, I think that was J. Edgar Hoover's motto ........

"Deny, deny and counter-charge"

[Shanet Clark]

APNEWS

Bush Doesn't Confirm NSA Data Collection

May 11, 1:29 PM (ET)

By LAURIE KELLMAN

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush did not confirm or deny a newspaper report Thursday that the National Security Agency was collecting records of tens of millions of ordinary Americans' phone calls.

"Our intelligence activities strictly target al-Qaida and their known affiliates," Bush said. "We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans."

USA Today, based on anonymous sources it said had direct knowledge of the arrangement, reported that AT&T Corp., Verizon Communications Inc. (VZ), and BellSouth Corp. (BLS) began turning over records of Americans' phone calls to the NSA shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Bush said any domestic intelligence-gathering measures he's approved are "lawful," and he says "appropriate" members of Congress have been briefed.

The disclosure could complicate Bush's bid to win confirmation of former NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden as CIA director.

Congressional Republicans and Democrats demanded answers from the Bush administration Thursday about a government spy agency secretly collecting records of ordinary Americans' phone calls to build a database of every call made within the country.

The top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee said he was shocked by the revelation about the NSA.

"It is our government, it's not one party's government. It's America's government. Those entrusted with great power have a duty to answer to Americans what they are doing," Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont.

The Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, said he would call the phone companies to appear before the panel in pursuit of what had transpired.

"We're really flying blind on the subject and that's not a good way to approach the Fourth Amendment and the constitutional issues involving privacy," Specter said of domestic surveillance in general.

The companies said Thursday that they are protecting customers' privacy but have an obligation to assist law enforcement and government agencies in ensuring the nation's security. "We prize the trust our customers place in us. If and when AT&T is asked to help, we do so strictly within the law and under the most stringent conditions," the company said in a statement, echoed by the others.

Bush said that U.S. intelligence targets terrorists and that the government does not listen to domestic telephone calls without court approval and that Congress has been briefed on intelligence programs.

He vowed to do everything in his power to fight terror and "we will do so within the laws of our country."

On Capitol Hill, several lawmakers expressed incredulity about the program, with some Republicans questioning the rationale and legal underpinning and several Democrats railing about the lack of congressional oversight.

"I don't know enough about the details except that I am willing to find out because I'm not sure why it would be necessary to keep and have that kind of information," said House Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told Fox News Channel: "The idea of collecting millions or thousands of phone numbers, how does that fit into following the enemy?"

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said bringing the telephone companies before the Judiciary Committee is an important step.

"We need more. We need to take this seriously, more seriously than some other matters that might come before the committee because our privacy as American citizens is at stake," Durbin said.

Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., argued that the program "is not a warrantless wiretapping of the American people. I don't think this action is nearly as troublesome as being made out here, because they are not tapping our phones."

The program does not involve listening to or taping the calls. Instead it documents who talks to whom in personal and business calls, whether local or long distance, by tracking which numbers are called, the newspaper said.

The NSA and the Office of National Intelligence Director did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

NSA spokesman Don Weber said in an e-mailed statement that given the nature of the agency's work, it would be "irresponsible to comment on actual or alleged operations issues." He added, "the NSA takes its legal responsibilities seriously and operates within the law."

NSA is the same spy agency that conducts the controversial domestic eavesdropping program that had been acknowledged earlier by Bush. The president said last year that he authorized the NSA to listen, without warrants, to international phone calls involving Americans suspected of terrorist links.

The report came as Hayden - Bush's choice to take over leadership of the CIA - had been scheduled to visit lawmakers on Capitol Hill Thursday. However, the meetings with Republican Sens. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska were postponed at the request of the White House, said congressional aides in the two Senate offices.

The White House offered no reason for the postponement to the lawmakers. Other meetings with lawmakers were still planned.

Hayden already faced criticism because of the NSA's secret domestic eavesdropping program. As head of the NSA from March 1999 to April 2005, Hayden also would have overseen the call-tracking program.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who has spoken favorably of the nomination, said the latest revelation "is also going to present a growing impediment to the confirmation of Gen. Hayden."

The NSA wants the database of domestic call records to look for any patterns that might suggest terrorist activity, USA Today said.

Don Weber, a senior spokesman for the NSA, told the paper that the agency operates within the law, but would not comment further on its operations.

One big telecommunications company, Qwest, has refused to turn over records to the program, the newspaper said, because of privacy and legal concerns.

---

Associated Press Writers Katherine Shrader and Elizabeth White in Washington and AP Business Writer Barbara Ortutay in New York contributed to this report.

[Shanet Clark]

CIA Official's Home, Office Searched

By KATHERINE SHRADER

Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Law enforcement officials executed search warrants Friday on the house and office of CIA's outgoing executive director as part of an investigation into corruption involving agency contracts, the FBI said.

The CIA's third ranking official, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, has been under investigation by the FBI, IRS, Defense Criminal Investigative Service, the CIA's inspector general and the U.S. attorney's office in San Diego, said FBI spokeswoman April Langwell in San Diego.

Under a sealed warrant, officials searched Foggo's Virginia home and his office at the CIA's Langley, Va., campus, Langwell said. She could provide no other details.

The FBI and other agencies have been investigating whether Foggo improperly intervened in the award of contracts to a San Diego businessman and personal friend, Brent Wilkes, who has been implicated in a congressional bribery scandal.

In a statement, CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise Dyck also confirmed the searches of his home and office on Friday morning.

"The agency is cooperating fully with the Department of Justice and the FBI," she said. "Agency leaders outside of the (inspector general's office) were informed just prior to the execution of the search warrants, in keeping with standard law enforcement procedures."

This week, Foggo announced his retirement from the agency after 25 years serving around the world. His decision came three days after CIA Director Porter Goss also announced he would be stepping down from the agency.

Dyck said the Foggo investigation has "absolutely nothing, zero" to do with Goss' resignation.

In a statement on Foggo's behalf last week, the CIA said he denied any improprieties. "Mr. Foggo maintains that government contracts for which he was responsible were properly awarded and administered," the agency said.

Wilkes has been described in court papers as an unindicted co-conspirator in a plot to bribe then-Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a California Republican who is now serving time in a federal prison for taking $2.4 million from government contractors.

FBI agents also have been investigating whether Wilkes provided Cunningham with prostitutes, limousines and hotel suites.

Foggo has acknowledged participating in the poker parties at the hotel rooms, but he has said there was nothing untoward about that. "If he attended occasional card games with friends over the years, Mr. Foggo insists they were that and nothing more," the CIA statement said.

Foggo's associates have said he received the Intelligence Commendation Medal for supporting the war on terror in 2002. Before becoming the agency's No. 3 leader in 2004, he was the chief of base at a classified facility that supports the war on terror.

As executive director, Foggo had the powerful position of overseeing the day-to-day operations of the CIA.

One FBI agent told reporters from Copley News Service, who were at Foggo's residence, that Foggo was not at home in his quiet suburban neighborhood near CIA headquarters and had not been detained. The agents refused to answer other questions about the raid.

A neighbor told Copley that the agents arrived about 8 a.m. EDT. A white Chevrolet van was backed up to the carport of the split-level brick home and, at one point, a man wearing latex gloves emerged from the house and went around back.

YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK

[John Simkin]

Interesting article in today’s Guardian that suggests that George Bush sacked Porter Goss for failing to follow the party line over 9/11 and Iraq. It also implies that Kyle Foggo might have been set up as part of this purge. Foggo apparently was very close to Goss.

As the CIA’s former counterterrorism chief, Vincent Cannistraro, has pointed out: “Good intelligence describes the world as it is, not as you’d like it to be.” Or as Paul Pillar, the CIA’s senior Middle Eastern analyst (2000 to 2005) has argued: "The Bush administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making but to justify a decision already made.”

Bush has now put the CIA under the control of the National Directorate of Intelligence. An organization controlled by the Pentagon. The new head of the CIA is General Michael Hayden, the former head of the National Security Agency.

Bush has therefore done what Nixon failed to do. Will the CIA take this lying down. Can we expect the emergence of another Deep Throat? If it happens, will any newspaper publish the information?

[John Simkin]

Porter Goss is upset with my page on him. According to Don Bohning in The Intelligencer: Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies (Volume 16 – Number 2 – Fall 2008)

The highest profile CIA figure Simkin fingers as a member of Operation 40, and as usual without any documentation, is Porter Goss, a CIA operative from the early 1960s through the early 1970s. Goss subsequently served as a Republican congressman from Florida and as CIA Director from 2004 to 2006. In its account of Operation 40, the Spartacus website carries a photograph which it claims to have been "taken in a nightclub in Mexico City on 22nd January, 1963... it is believed men in the photograph are all members of Operation 40." Among them, allegedly, is Goss. I sent Goss a copy of the photo. In a subsequent telephone interview after seeing the photo, not only did he say he had "never heard of Operation 40," but declared with some vehemence the man identified in the nightclub photo "categorically, decisively and completely was not me." ...

There are 15 pages devoted to Goss, including a two page opening biography and the rest an accumulation of excerpts from mostly obscure sources that generally echo Simkin's own radical views. They include the alleged picture of Operation 40 members - among them Goss - at a Mexico City nightclub in 1963, and which Goss categorically denies is he.

The brief website biography is a mishmash of confusing and contradictory misinformation. It begins, saying that after joining the CIA in 1962, Goss spent the next few years at the JMWAVE station in Miami "where he worked with people such as Ted Shackley, David Sanchez Morales, Edward Lansdale, William Harvey and Tracy Barnes."

There are several problems with that, including the fact that William Harvey, Edward Lansdale and Tracy Barnes - while no doubt visiting Miami at one time or another - all worked out of Washington, not the Miami station. Goss, over the course of two recent telephone interviews, said "the JMWAVE stuff (regarding Goss) is nonsense. I knew Shackley but I was so junior compared to those people… a basic Boy Scout at that point."

Neither, he said, did he work at the JMWAVE station over several years as Simkin's website claims, but only two to three months - primarily as a photo interpreter - in the period surrounding the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. He said he also did duty during that period as a small boat handler "as a matter of dealing with lots of people moving around but I never went into Cuba."

The Simkin website profile erroneously claims Goss was "one of the 400 officers who was employed on the [Operation Mongoose] project," the Kennedy administration's post-Bay of Pigs covert operation designed to bring down Castro. Goss, in a phone interview, said: "All I know about Mongoose and the Bay of Pigs is what I have read about."

Contradicting his own website profile information that Goss joined the CIA in 1962, two paragraphs later Simkin quotes Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA agent, as claiming that Goss was involved in paramilitary activity against the Cubans: "I know he was involved in the Bay of Pigs operation, he worked out of Miami with Cuban exiles… and took part in… attempts to overthrow Castro."

The Bay of Pigs took place in 1961 so it would have been impossible for Goss to have taken any role in it if he didn't join the CIA until 1962, as Simkin himself says. Goss confirmed that although recruited earlier, he did not actively start working for the CIA until late 1961 or early 1962, after first joining Army Intelligence through Yale University's Army Reserve Officers Training (ROTC) program. From there, he said he "gravitated to the CIA."

Goss confirmed that his first four to five years with the CIA involved the Western Hemisphere, namely Central America, Mexico and Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic). He said he was never permanently assigned to any CIA station in the area, always "traveling to those regions from Washington," with the Dominican Republic being "the only place I lived for any extensive period." He was assigned to London in the mid-1960s, retiring in 1970 for health reasons.

The website describes his "main area of expertise" as the "infiltration of trade unions and other organizations of the labour movement." While saying he was not at liberty to say what his main area of expertise was, Goss said the website description was "a stretch."

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKgoss.htm

[William Plumlee]

GOSS PORTER J (R-FL)  Britain 1971

Assn. Former Intelligence Officers. Membership Directory. 1996 

Assn. Former Intelligence Officers. Periscope 1988-SP (20-1) 

Assn. Former Intelligence Officers. Periscope 1988-SU (24) 

Bamford,J. Body of Secrets. 2001 (457, 466-7, 475) 

Barry and the Boys - Hopsicker

Coll,S. Ghost Wars. 2004 (424) 

Council on Foreign Relations. Membership Roster. 2004 

Hicks,S. The Big Wedding. 2005 (80) 

Intelligence (Paris) 1997-02-10 (17) 

Intelligence (Paris) 2000-02-28 (20) 

Lewis,C. The Buying of the Congress. 1998 (227, 257) 

Mackenzie,A. Secrets: The CIA's War at Home. 1997 (200) 

NameBase NewsLine 1997-01 (6) 

Nation 1995-03-13 (333) 

Nation 1997-05-19 (24) 

New York Times 2001-01-20 (A16) 

New York Times 2004-06-25 (A12) 

New York Times 2004-08-13 (A17) 

New York Times 2004-09-22 (A18) 

New York Times 2004-10-01 (A11) 

New York Times 2004-12-29 (A1, 16) 

New York Times 2005-08-26 (A12) 

Wall Street Journal 2007-02-14 (A12) 

Washington Post 1991-10-13 (A11) 

Washington Post 1992-08-22 (D5) 

Washington Post 1999-09-07 (A8) 

Washington Post 2000-02-11 (A39) 

Washington Times 1994-05-27 (A12) 

Washington Times 1996-08-01 (A17) 

Weiner,T. Legacy of Ashes. 2007 (452, 465, 467-8, 499-500, 502-4, 506-8, 670-1) 

Who's Who in America. 1992-1993

Porter & 'the boys: Goss Made His 'Bones' on CIA Hit Team

"Look out kid, They keep it all hid.”

  Bob Dylan “Subterranean Homesick Blues”

May 6 2006--Venice,FL.

by Daniel Hopsicker  

Deposed CIA head Porter Goss was once a member of the CIA's super-secret Operation 40, an assassination squad which roamed through North and Central America during the 1960's. 

Along with a number of men whose names became famous and whose lives and careers comprise a large part of America’s Secret History, Goss appears (see a comparison) in the historic photograph at right, which also appears on the cover of "Barry & 'the boys': The CIA, the Mob, and America's Secret History." 

It is the only extant photograph of the members of Operation Forty, the CIA’s assassination squad, taken in a Mexico City nightclub in 1963.  

Coupled with his close proximity to the terrorist hijackers who used his Congressional District in Charlotte County as one of their main bases of operations, this fact virtually shouts out for closer examination during the post-mortems dissecting his tenure as CIA chief.

When we first saw the photo, it was in the yellowed frame used by nightclub photographers back in the 60's. It bore the name of a nightclub (La Reforma) in Mexico City, and was stamped with a date, January 22, 1963, ten months to the day before the Kennedy assassination.  

"Guido, meet the General. General, meet Guido."

The Mexico City nightclub photo reveals a mixed group of Cuban exiles, Italian wise guys, and square-jawed military intelligence types. It was discovered among keepsakes kept in the safe of the widow of CIA pilot and drug smuggler Barry Seal, where it was overlooked by a 7-man team from the U.S. State Department which showed up at her house in 1995 to comb through her records.

Barry Seal had been recruited at the age of 17, along with Lee Oswald, by CIA agent David Ferrie, at a two week summer camp of the Louisiana Civil Air Patrol in 1957.

The product of a patrician Connecticut upbringing, an elite preparatory school and Yale University, Goss entered the high-stakes espionage game being played out between the Florida Keys and the coast of Cuba after the CIA-backed coup against Castro collapsed at the Bay of Pigs.

"During his junior year, he met a CIA recruiter through his ROTC commanders,” reported the September 24, 2002 Orlando Sentinel, in a story headlined “TERRORISM FIGHT KEEPS REP. GOSS IN POLITICAL FRAY.”  

“It is true I was in CIA from approximately the late 50's to approximately the early 70's,” Goss told antagonist Michael Moore.  

At the time the picture was taken Barry Seal was a young-looking 24-year old. Porter Goss was the same age.

 

"They've given you a number, and taken 'way your name."

Seal is seated third from left. Sitting right next to him (second from left) is Porter Goss. Beside Goss is notorious "freedom fighter" Felix Rodriguez (front left), a Cuban vice cop under the corrupt Mob-run Batista regime in Cuba who later became an Iran Contra operative and a confidant of the first George Bush.  

On the other side of the table is the the only spook celebrant displaying any regard for tradecraft... Covering his face with his sport coat is Frank Sturgis, famous for being one of the Watergate burglars.  

Beside Sturgis (front right) is another famous spook, at least among Kennedy assassination researchers, William Seymour, the New Orleans representative of the Double-Chek Corporation, a CIA front used to recruit pilots (like Seal). Seymour is regarded by many researchers as the man who on several notable occasions is said to have impersonated Lee Harvey Oswald, when that lone nut gunman was out of the country.  

At the time it was taken the CIA's covert action chief in Mexico City was David Atlee Phillips, AKA Maurice Bishop, who reportedly met with Oswald in Dallas before the assassination.  

"You don't have the negative too do you?"

The sensitive nature of the picture was confirmed by a person who had known and worked with Seal, who incidentally had been the inspiration for the hit song "Secret Agent Man," by his buddy Johnny Rivers in the 'mid-60's.  

The man, also the executor of Seal's estate, reacted with unconcealed shock when first shown the picture. “Where did you get that?” he demanded. “I didn’t know there were any… Where did this picture come from?"

“Yeah, Barry was Op Forty,” Jerry Patrick Hemming confirmed. “He flew in killer teams inside the island (Cuba) before the invasion to take out Fidel.” 

Frank Sturgis, a member of the team that broke into Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in 1972, later admitted to having been part of Operation Forty.  

Other famous names who belonged to Operation Forty include Thomas Clines, Edwin Wilson and "Blond Ghost" Ted Shackley. 

Colonel William Bishop showed author Dick Russell a series of photographs of Latin-looking individuals who belonged to the group. On the backs of the pictures were the words "Special talent 1960-65, Ice pick man ... Butcher... Sniper and demo [demolition] expert ... Propaganda ... Knife man... Pilot and navigator ... Mutilator." 

“Bishop said, ‘We weren't playing a nice game.’”

When nephew Chuck Giancana wrote about Mob Boss Sam Giancana’s strategic move to Mexico in early 1963, he wrote this about Operation Forty...

"It was to be an all-out, no-holds-barred Latin American push. Mooney (Giancana) settled into a lavish Mexico City apartment and went right to work, drawing on the expertise and mammoth resources of the recently-formed CIA team of assassins and operatives specifically trained for Latin American clandestine operations. CIA insiders jokingly dubbed the team the White Hand, an allusion to the Mafia killer progenitors the Black Hand."

"You're not cleared for that information."

Although the photo was available at the time of his confirmation as head of the CIA, the major media showed no inclination to press Goss on the matter. In fact, the party line rang out everywhere. 

"Rep. Porter J. Goss has disclosed precious few details of his CIAemployment from roughly 1960 to 1971,” reported a profile in the Associated Press. Reuters called him a “mystery man,” and said he had been “close-mouthed about his past.”  

“He worked in Haiti, the Dominican Republic and Mexico-tumultuous countries during that decade of the Cold War,” Reuters reported.  

During a 2002 interview with The Washington Post, Goss joked that he performed photo interpretation and "small-boat handling," which led to "some very interesting moments in the Florida Straits."  

He acknowledged he had recruited and run foreign agents and said he would be uncomfortable traveling to Cuba but wouldn't say more.  

“With a prep-school education and a Greek major at Yale, Goss passed up the conventional life to be a CIA spook,” reads one typical wire service account.  

Actually, the facts lean heavily towards the proposition that with “a prep school education and a Greek major at Yale,” Goss’s choice to become a CIA spook in the early 60's was an entirely conventional one. 

 

"Closed orders and secret societies"

The appointment of Porter Goss revealed that what passes for American civic life may in reality be just an elaborate game of Inside Baseball. Goss found himself paired often with fellow Floridian, Democratic Sen. Bob Graham, then the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, leading the joint congressional inquiry into the attacks.  

The two men share another unique distinction: both were having breakfast on the morning of September 11th, 2001 with a man who reportedly wired $100,000 to Mohamed Atta.

"When the news [of the attacks on the World Trade Center] came, the two Florida lawmakers who lead the House and Senate intelligence committees were having breakfast with the head of the Pakistani intelligence service.” 

In testimony before Congress on February 9, 2004, Chief Weapons Inspector David Kay noted, "Closed orders and secret societies, whether they be religious or governmental, are the groups that have the hardest time reforming themselves in the face of failure without outside input."

When was the last time anyone heard a weapons inspector mention secret societies?

Do you ever get the feeling there's something they're not telling us?

Hopsicker's information and his book is total BS.., and I have told him that, as well as this Forum and anybody else who would listen... as a result I was called "..a Dickhead", by Hopsicker, and he posted on the internet for awhile, ("The Dickheads must be getting Nervous" refering to me as being CIA disinformation) because I would not embrace his book and support it.

And too, he wrote in his book "... he would never believe any thing I (Plumlee) have ever said...", because I would not go along with his theory about Seal, Ops 40, the Mexico picture, and JFK and the activities at Redbird Airport in Oakcliff (Dallas TX).

I do not plan on getting into a pissing match over this... I do not have the time for such debates that go nowhere. If some are really interested in such crap, then they can go back and read what I have had to say about Operation 40 and the Cuban Desk as well as Wave Station aka' Miami Station"... also I have never said Tracy Barns was assigned to JM/WAVE... I have always said he was in Washington DC, at Langley... However the Experts know better than I... and we will let it go at that.

If you want to be known as an "Expert" on Black OPs, or any other matters.., and have a theory... then self publish a book and put all kinds of rumors, opinions, theories, ect.., in it..., and because someday later its found in a book, then you will be quoted as an expert on the subject matter. Although your information is badly flawed, lacks Facts and void of solid references, but because it is found in print, then it must be true. To me this is a dis service to history and the truth thereof. AND I want no part of being associated with that type of research.

Edited April 22, 2009 by William Plumlee

[William Kelly]

Don Bohning wrote:

Goss confirmed that although recruited earlier, he did not actively start working for the CIA until late 1961 or early 1962, after first joining Army Intelligence through Yale University's Army Reserve Officers Training (ROTC) program. From there, he said he "gravitated to the CIA."

Goss confirmed that his first four to five years with the CIA involved the Western Hemisphere, namely Central America, Mexico and Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic). He said he was never permanently assigned to any CIA station in the area, always "traveling to those regions from Washington," with the Dominican Republic being "the only place I lived for any extensive period." He was assigned to London in the mid-1960s, retiring in 1970 for health reasons.

The website describes his "main area of expertise" as the "infiltration of trade unions and other organizations of the labour movement." While saying he was not at liberty to say what his main area of expertise was, Goss said the website description was "a stretch."

Which supports and confirms the account given by Bradley E. Ayers, a US Army Ranger Captain assigned to train some of the anti-Castro Cuban maritime commandos, who participated in a raid aboard the Rex. - BK

"I later met Porter on one of my visits to the station while training the commandos on Elliott Key. Porter was in his mid-20s, I estimated, and by build, manner, appearance, and facial features, he might have been a youthful clone of Gordon Campbell. I believe this man was Porter Goss, President George W. Bush's appointee to head the CIA in 2005."

p. 267 The Zenith Secret - An Insider Exposes the Secret War Against Cuba and the Plot that Killed the Kennedy brothers (Vox Pop, 2006)