Porter Goss on why he resigned as head of the CIA.
The NeoCon Motto: Never Lose Faith In Someone Who Tells You What You Want To Hear
In January, prominent neo-conservative Michael Ledeen (Karl Rove’s point man on foreign policy), writing for the National Review, reported that Osama Bin Laden had died last December:
And, according to Iranians I trust, Osama bin Laden finally departed this world in mid-December. The al Qaeda leader died of kidney failure and was buried in Iran, where he had spent most of his time since the destruction of al Qaeda in Afghanistan.
On April 23, Al-Jazeera broadcast a tape from Bin Laden (which the Bush administration believes is authentic) where he refers to events that occurred in late March. Ledeen responded the next day:
Bin Laden Tape [Michael Ledeen]
Obviously, if that was really bin Laden, I was misinformed””and I in turn misinformed readers by passing it on””when I reported being told that bin Laden died in Iran in mid-December. I’ve gone back to my sources, who are serious people who have been accurate in the past, and I should hear back in a few days.
Well, nearly two weeks have past and we haven’t heard anything else from Ledeen about the subject. (His original article remains on National Review, without correction or comment.)
The moral: never believe neo-conservatives with “trustworthy” and “serious” sources who tell them what they want to hear.
“It’s all about the Duke Cunningham scandal,”
a senior law enforcement official told the NY Daily News in reference to Goss’ resignation. “Goss’ inability to handle the allegations swirling around [No. 3 official at the CIA, Dusty] Foggo prompted John Negroponte, the director of National Intelligence, who oversees all of the nation’s spy agencies, to press for the CIA chief’s ouster, the senior official said. The official said Goss is not an FBI target but ‘there is an impending indictment’ of Foggo for steering defense contracts to his poker buddies.” Another source added, “This administration may be on the verge of a major scandal.”
Some sources tell the San Diego Union Tribune
that Goss’s resignation was related to the Cunningham bribery scandal. Other sources toe the official line and tell the paper Goss’s resignation was completely unrelated. (The San Diego Union Tribune recently won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the Cunningham scandal.)
