Porter Goss was born in
Waterbury, Connecticut, on 26th November, 1938. After graduating from
Yale University with a degree in Greek classics
in 1960 he served in the United States Army.
In 1962 Goss joined the Central
Intelligence Agency.
Over the next few years he was based at the JM/WAVE,
the CIA station in Miami where he worked with people such as Ted
Shackley, David
Sanchez Morales,
Edward
Lansdale,
William Harvey and Tracy
Barnes.
After the Bay
of Pigs disaster President John
F. Kennedy sanctioned
what became known as Operation Mongoose.
Robert
Kennedy took
overall control of the operation and Edward
Lansdale
was appointed project leader
and was given the responsibility to "use our available assets
to help Cuba overthrow the Communist regime." Goss was one of
the 400 CIA officers who was employed on the project.
Goss spoke Spanish and
this was very useful as the JM/WAVE station
ran 2,200 Cuban agents. Recently, Vince Cannistraro, a CIA agent at
JM/WAVE claimed 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".
As a result of negotiations
following the Cuban Missile Crisis,
President
John
F. Kennedy
called an end to Operation
Mongoose. Over the next few years Goss served in Haiti, the Dominican
Republic, Mexico, and Western Europe. His main area of expertise was
the infiltration of trade unions and other organizations of the labour
movement.
In 1970 Porter Goss contracted
a bacteriological infection that almost killed him. The following
year he purchased a home on Sanibel Island, in south-west Florida.
He officially left the CIA in 1972 and began
a boat letting agency. He also worked as a reporter on the local newspaper
and between 1974 and 1982 served on the city council. Goss was also
commissioner of Lee County, Florida (1983-1988).
A member of the Republican
Party, Goss was elected to Congress in 1988. Gross has been chairman
of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence since 1996. In this
position has called for making the law prohibiting the assassination
of foreign leaders more flexible. After the 1998 terrorist bombings
of the U.S. Embassies in East Africa, Goss declared that the CIA had
become too "gun-shy."
Some observers have been
highly critical of Goss' performance as chairman of what one has called
the "oversight committee". Goss remained loyal to George
Bush and during the Joseph Wilson-Valerie Plame scandal defended the
White House official who publicly exposed the identity of an undercover
agent. Goss did not seem concerned that the leak was an act of political
retaliation against the agent's spouse.
In an interview with his
local newspaper, The Herald-Tribune,
Porter Goss said the case was the result of "wild and unsubstantiated
allegations, which are being obviously piled on by partisan politicians
during an election year." There was no need to mount an investigation,
he said, because there was no evidence of "willful disclosure".
Goss was not asked how he was able to come to this conclusion without
an investigation. To illustrate his partisan view of his office, he
remarked: "Somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA, I'll
have an investigation."
Goss has also used his
position to attack statements made by John Kerry on national security.
After one speech he announced that Kerry
had "neglected the president's historic achievements" while
at the same time embracing "the goals that the president has
already laid to make the world a safer place."
Goss' loyalty was rewarded
in August, 2004, when Bush announced that he was nominated to become
the next Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency.
Porter Goss was forced to resign as Director of the CIA in May, 2006. According to some sources, this was linked to the investigation of top CIA official Kyle Foggo who had been accused improperly steered a $2.4 million contract to his close college friend Brent Wilkes, a defense contractor implicated in the Randy Cunningham case.
This photograph was taken
in a nightclub in Mexico City on 22nd January, 1963. It is believed
that the
men in the photograph are all members of Operation 40. Closest to
the camera on the left is Felix Rodriguez.
Next to him is Porter Goss and Barry Seal. Tosh
Plumlee is
attempting to hide his face
with his coat. Others in the picture are Alberto 'Loco' Blanco (3rd
right) and Jorgo Robreno (4th right).
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
Forum Debate: Porter Goss
Namebase: Porter Goss
(1)
Suzanne Goldenberg,
The Guardian (13th August, 2004)
While
Mr Goss certainly has the pedigree to be CIA chief, he presents a
potentially rich target. Now 65, he is the product of a patrician
Connecticut upbringing, graduating from an elite preparatory school
and Yale University. He spent two years in the army in military intelligence
before joining the CIA in 1962. It was the height of the cold war,
and Mr Goss, who speaks Spanish, worked as a clandestine case officer
based in the Miami office.
At a time when the CIA
was obsessive about the idea of communist infiltration of the trade
unions - and undertook to sabotage or destroy so-called front organisations
- his beat was the labour movements of central America and, later,
Europe. Mr Goss has spoken little about his 10 years in the agency,
beyond an aside that he was in the region during the Cuban missile
crisis in 1962. "I had some very interesting moments in the Florida
Straits," he told reporters recently.
(2)
Ray McGovern, Counterpunch
(6th July, 2004)
There is, thankfully, a
remnant of CIA professionals who still put objective analysis above
political correctness and career advancement. Just when they thought
there were no indignities left for them to suffer, they are shuddering
again at press reports that Rep. Porter Goss (R-FL) may soon be their
new boss.
That possibility conjures
up a painful flashback for those of us who served as CIA analysts
when Richard Nixon was president. Chalk it up to our naivety, but
we were taken aback when swashbuckling James Schlesinger, who followed
Richard Helms as CIA director, announced on arrival, "I am here
to see that you guys don't screw Richard Nixon!" To underscore
his point, Schlesinger told us he would be reporting directly to White
House political adviser Bob Haldeman (Nixon's Karl Rove) and not to
National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger.
No doubt Goss would be
more discreet in showing his hand, but his appointment as director
would be the ultimate in politicization. He has long shown himself
to be under the spell of Vice President Dick Cheney, and would likely
report primarily to him and to White House political adviser Karl
Rove rather than to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
Goss would almost certainly
follow lame-duck director George Tenet's practice of reading to the
president in the morning and become an integral part of the "White
House team." The team-membership phenomenon is particularly disquieting...
But what about CIA alumnus
Porter Goss, then in his sixth year as chairman of the House intelligence
oversight committee? Republican party loyalist first and foremost,
Goss chose to give an entirely new meaning to "oversight."
Even when it became clear that the "mushroom cloud" reporting
was based mostly on a forgery, he just sat back and watched it all
happen.
(3)
Egbert F. Bhatty, Washington
Dispatch (11th August, 2004)
President
George Bush’s appointment Tuesday of Florida Republican Representative
Porter Goss as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had
politics written all over it.
He’s in trouble in
Florida, despite his brother Jeb being Governor of the state. So,
he appointed Goss, a Floridian, as Director of the CIA, and, then,
immediately after the announcement, bolted for Florida to canvass
for votes.
It clearly looks as if
Goss’ appointment has more to do with winning Florida for Bush
in November than with national security.
In making the announcement
in the Rose garden, President Bush said that Goss was “the right
man to lead this important agency at this critical moment in our nation’s
history.”
Right man? That can hardly
be true.
As Chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee over the last 8 years, Goss has produced nothing
of note that would qualify him for the job. In fact, 9-11 is a notable
failure that can be charged against him and his Committee.
During his Chairmanship
of the House Intelligence Committee the humint (human intelligence)
component of the CIA has been almost completely gutted! In March 2003,
when Bush invaded Iraq, the CIA did not have a single spy inside President
Saddam Hussein’s inner circle! – or, even his outer circle!
Furthermore, there is no
evidence that in his 16 years in Congress and in his 8 years as Chairman
of the House Intelligence Committee that he, Goss, or his Committee,
had any cognizance of the emerging threat from Osama bin Laden and
al Qaeda.
The reason for this failure
is simple: Goss is a bureaucrat – possibly the worst kind of
bureaucrat, a loyal bureaucrat.
Bureaucrats have no imagination.
They do not innovate. They dare not think outside the box. They are
a perfect replication of their master’s voice.
And, now Bush wants him
to be a leader, an innovator, an ideas man against al Qaeda. It’s
like asking a dumb sheep to suddenly become a ravenous wolf.
It’s not going to
happen. So, unless Porter Goss has some remarkable, hidden transformative
powers – like the mild mannered Clark Kent turning into Superman
– that Bush has seen, the CIA under Goss, the bureaucrat, is
in great danger of simply rolling over and going moribund.
But, worse is in store.
At least, today, there is flash of independence in the CIA’s
analyses. Under Goss, a highly partisan operator, CIA judgments –
on, for example, Syria, or Iran, both of which are in Bush’s
gun sights -- are likely to be bent to the will of the White House.
There is no evidence, yet,
that Goss intends to sever the umbilical cord to his master. His acceptance
speech, in the Rose Garden, contained not a hint – not a shred
– of his desire to be independent.
Nor, in his acceptance,
did he display any appreciation of the complexity of the job. (Quite
possibly the President told him to cut it short as he, the President,
was in a hurry to get to Florida!)
But, surely, since he had
been lobbying for the job from the day that former CIA chief George
Tenet expressed his desire to resign, Goss could have at least outlined
the nature of the challenge – the geography of the threat, the
multi-generational duration of the conflict, the need for active assistance
from Europe, the beneficial involvement of the Vatican.
(4)
Fred Kaplan, Spies
Like Goss (10th August, 2004)
That
Senate committee would have to confirm Goss' nomination before he
could take the job. And here's where the picture gets strange. It
is extremely doubtful at this late date that the committee would -
or physically could - hold confirmation hearings before the November
election. Even if hearings were somehow rushed (say, for "national
security" reasons), and if Goss won the vote, he would be essentially
powerless at least for a while: Any big changes he might order would
be ignored until after the election, because everyone at Langley would
know that Goss would get the boot if Kerry won.
So, why is Bush nominating
Goss now? One possible answer: to create the impression that he's
moving forward - that he's doing something - in the war against terrorism.
The president took a similar step last week when he announced with
great fanfare the creation of a national intelligence director, as
recommended by the 9/11 commission - but without giving this NID any
of the statutory powers that the commission said would be needed to
make the post meaningful.
Putting Goss' name on the
table now - even though he probably couldn't become the CIA director
for at least three months - has the same effect. Meanwhile, news stories
will lay out Goss' credentials. Colleagues will attest to his seriousness.
Goss himself will be accorded high respect, his words (many of them
no doubt in praise of Team Bush) widely reported in national media.
If Bush does win in November,
Goss, like most presidential appointments, will almost certainly be
confirmed (Sen. Rockefeller's caveat notwithstanding). A recent profile
in Government Executive magazine notes that Goss has "attained
iconic status on Capitol Hill for his knowledge of intelligence operations
and policy."
Unlike most CIA directors,
who (for better or worse) had no prior experience at intelligence
before commanding Langley, Goss would come to the job with an agenda.
He was a CIA case officer back in the days before the Church committee
i.e., when spies did their business competently and ruthlessly with
minimal oversight or fear of exposure.
Steve Coll, in his magisterial
book Ghost Wars, notes that after the 1998 terrorist bombings
of the US Embassies in East Africa, Goss declared publicly what many
intelligence officials were saying privately - that the CIA's directorate
of operations (the branch in charge of spying) had become too "gun-shy."
Earlier this year, in his committee's report on the fiscal year 2005
intelligence budget, Goss railed against the CIA's timidity in such
strong terms that Tenet - unwisely - replied in an angry personal
letter and circulated it widely.
(5)
Daniel Hopsicker, Mad Cow
Morning News (24th August, 2004)
The Mexico
City nightclub photo reveals a mixed group of apparent 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 (third from left). It appears on
the cover of “Barry & ‘the boys:’ The CIA, the
Mob & America’s Secret History”.
Goss appears second on
the left. He is seated between notorious CIA pilot and drug smuggler
Barry Seal (third left) and the equally-notorious CIA assassin Felix
Rodriguez (front left), a Cuban vice cop under the corrupt Mob-run
Batista regime who later became an Iran Contra operative and a confidant
of the first George Bush.
The only one of the spook
celebrants displaying any hint of tradecraft (seated on the other
side of the table covering his face with his sport coat) is Frank
Sturgis, most famous as one of the Watergate burglars.
Beside him sits (front
right) William Seymour, New Orleans representative of the Double-Chek
Corporation, a CIA front used to recruit pilots (like Seal), and a
man who many Kennedy assassination researchers believe impersonated
Lee Harvey Oswald on several occasions when the lone nut gunman was
out of the country and so unable to impersonate himself...
There are many intriguing
connections hinted at by Goss’s presence in the photo: 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.
Other connections: in the
well-received “Deadly Secrets,” authors Warren Hinkle and
William Turner name Rafael 'Chi Chi' Quintero, Lois Posada Carriles,
Felix Rodriguez and Frank Sturgis as members of Operation Forty, under
the overall control of E. Howard Hunt.
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.
More famous names: Thomas
Clines, the notorious Edwin Wilson and "Blond Ghost" Ted
Shackley, Mr. Spook himself… all involved with Operation Forty,
as was Barry Seal.
“Yeah, Barry was Op
Forty,” Gerald Hemming confirmed to us. “He flew in killer
teams inside the island (Cuba) before the invasion to take out Fidel.”
(6)
Jean-Guy Allard, Who
had the means and motives to kill Kennedy in 1963?
(22nd May, 2005)
“Who
in 1963 had the resources to assassinate Kennedy? Who had the means
and who had the motives to kill the U.S. president?”, asks General
Fabian Escalante in an exclusive interview in his Havana office. And
he gives the answer: "CIA agents from Operation 40 who were rabidly
anti-Kennedy. And among them were Orlando Bosch, Luis Posada Carriles,
Antonio Veciana and Felix Rodriguez Mendigutia."
“Who
were the ones who had the training to murder Kennedy? The ones who
had all of the capabilities to carry it out? Who were the expert marksmen?"
continues Escalante, pointing out that the case of international terrorist
Luis Posada Carriles has to be seen within the historical context
of what he calls "the machinery of the Cuban American mafia."
And in the heart of that
machinery is Operation 40, created by the CIA on the eve of the failed
Bay of Pigs invasion, says the ex-chief of Cuban intelligence, author
of The Plot (Ocean Press), about the assassination of the U.S.
leader.
"The first news that
we have of Operation 40 is a statement made by a mercenary of the
Bay of Pigs who was the chief of military intelligence of the invading
brigade and whose name was Jose Raul de Varona Gonzalez," says
Escalante.
"In his statement
this man said the following: in the month of March, 1961, around the
seventh, Mr. Vicente Leon arrived at the base in Guatemala at the
head of some 53 men saying that he had been sent by the office of
Mr. Joaquin Sanjenis, Chief of Civilian Intelligence, with a mission
he said was called Operation 40. It was a special group that didn't
have anything to do with the brigade and which would go in the rearguard
occupying towns and cities. His prime mission was to take over the
files of intelligence agencies, public buildings, banks, industries,
and capture the heads and leaders in all of the cities and interrogate
them. Interrogate them in his own way”.
The individuals who comprised
Operation 40 had been selected by Sangenis in Miami and taken to a
nearby farm "where they took some courses and were subjected
to a lie detector."
Joaquin Sangenis was Chief
of Police in the time of President Carlos Prio, recalls Escalante.
"I don't know if he was Chief of the Palace Secret Service but
he was very close to Carlos Prio. And in 1973 he dies under very strange
circumstances. He disappears. In Miami, people learn to their surprise
- without any prior illness and without any homicidal act -- that
Sangenis, who wasn't that old in '73, had died unexpectedly. There
was no wake. He was buried in a hurry."
Operation 40 had "in
the year '61, 86 employees, of which 37 had been trained as case officers...while
in Cuba we probably didn't have one single case officer trained. I
didn't finish the course until July of '61 and I was in the first
training group."
After the failure of the
Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA organizes a Domestic Affairs Division.
"For the first time, the CIA is going to work inside of the U.S.
because until that moment, it wasn't doing it. It was prohibited.
"And at the head of
this division they put Tracy Barnes, who was chief of the CIA operations
group which operated against Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala, and he brought
to the same group of officers David Atlee Phillips, David Sanchez
Morales and Howard Hunt, and two or three other Americans who just
as surely worked on the Guatemala project."
The first CIA project against
the Cuban revolution wasn't a landing and assault brigade, remarks
the general. "The first CIA project was to create a civil war
inside of Cuba. They were thinking of creating political leaders overseas,
organizing a series of military cadres overseas who are the ones who
will infiltrate Cuba and who will place themselves at the head of
this civil war they are planning to carry out. And furthermore parallel
to that, to make an intelligence network. All of this falls apart
almost as soon as it is born.
"In October 1960,
they realize that this project has failed, and that is when Brigade
2506 is formed, when due to the uprising of a group of patriotic military
officers in Puerto Barrios in Guatemala and, this was in November,
they send the Cuban mercenaries in Brigade 2506 to put down this operation."
Escalante remembers that
in 1959 a "very strong" CIA center existed in Cuba with
several case officers based in Havana. Among them two very important
figures: David Sanchez Morales, registered as a diplomat with the
U.S. embassy, and David Atlee Phillips who was doing business in Cuba
since 1957.
"Phillips had a press
agency, David Phillips Associates, which had offices on Humbolt St.,
behind the Rampa theater. We had information from a person who was
his personal secretary at the time and he was using the Berlitz Academy,
where he would meet with people he wanted to recruit. The Berlitz
Academy was not his business, but he had recruited its director and
that's why he was using it to train his agents.
"And at that time
he recruits Antonio Veciana, Juan Manuel Salvat, Ricardo Morales Navarrete,
Isidro Borjas, a person of Mexican origin, to carry out the internal
counterrevolution."
Phillips will train illegal
cadres while Morales, on his part, directs a group of North Americans
who are infiltrated in the Rebel Army: Frank Sturgis, Gerry Hemming,
William Morgan.
"When the revolution
triumphs these people are officers in the Rebel Army, many of them
in the air force because the chief there is Pedro Luis Diaz Lanz,
who was the first chief of the rebel air force and who later leaves
the country when an assassination attempt against Fidel fails. He
will also direct Howard Hunt, who is visiting Cuba in '59 and '60
and who will write a far-fetched chronicle about Havana which is a
series of lies. Hunt is a professional liar.
"There was information
that at the end of '58, when CIA Inspector General Lyman Kirkpatrick
came to tell Batista to leave power, he has an interview with a group
of figures. And since this Phillips was passing himself off as a respectable
North American businessman, Kirkpatrick has an interview with him.
And Phillips explains to him that the situation is very difficult."
In this context, now in
the middle of '58, the CIA plans an assassination attempt on Fidel
with a North American citizen, Alan Robert Nye, and ex-marine recruited
in Fort Lauderdale by agents of the FBI and by the Cuban military
intelligence service.
"He was received here
in Havana, they put him up at the Comodoro hotel, fortunately they
paid his bill and that was how he was later discovered. They sent
him to a zone near Bayamo where Fidel was, in a zone called Santa
Rita and he was arrested there by the Rebel Army. He had instructions
to introduce himself to Fidel as a sympathizer of the Cuban cause
and to assassinate him at the first opportunity," recalls Escalante.
The man is arrested on
December 12, 1958, by rebel forces and remains in custody until the
beginning of 1959. "An officer of the Rebel Army is in charge
of the investigation. Knight says that he was lodged at the Comodoro
hotel and it turns out that the ones who had paid this gentleman's
expenses were none other than Col. Orlando Piedra, the chief of the
investigation bureau of the police, and Col. Tabernilla II, the son
of the head of the army."
"These are the principal
artists," says the ex-chief of Cuban intelligence. "David
Phillips; David Morales; Howard Hunt; a figure who disappeared later
and who was head of the CIA until diplomatic relations were broken,
James Noel; and several more who were working actively."
When the Domestic Affairs
Division is created, the large CIA operations base in Miami was subordinate
to the central division of the CIA; "that is to say that the
JM/WAVE station, which had 400 officers plus 4,000 Cuban agents, was
directed by the main center in Langley.
"Whom are they going
to use? Operation 40. That is to say all of the specialists who are
already trained, have gone through the school, have already participated
in operations against Cuba...I refer to the group of Felix Rodriguez
Mendigutia, Luis Posada Carriles, Orlando Bosch, Virgilio Paz, Alvin
Ross, Jose Dionisio Suarez, Antonio Veciana, Ricardo Morales Navarrete,
Felipe Rivero, who recently died, the Novo Sampoll brothers, Gaspar
"Gasparito" Jimenez Escobedo, Juan Manuel Salvat, Nazario
Sargent, Carlos Bringuier, Antonio Cuesta, Eladio del Valle, Herminio
Diaz, Pedro Luis Diaz Lanz, Rafael "Chichi" Quintero, Jose
Basulto, Paulino Sierra, Bernard Baker, who was a Cuban with a North
American name -- he was a guard at the U.S. embassy - and Eugenio
Martinez, alias 'Musculito.'
"And there was the
team that brought together all of the North Americans: David Morales;
David Phillips; Howard Hunt; Willian Harvey; Frank Sturgis; Gerry
Hemming; John Rosselli, who was second head of the Chicago mafia and
at that time in '62; Porter Goss, the current head of the CIA, who
is in the JM/WAVE as a subordinate of Phillips and Morales."
"Operation 40 is the
grandmother and great-grandmother of all of the operations that are
formed later," continues Escalante.
"The Domestic Affairs
Division will have its missions...You have to remember the scandal
of the Pentagon papers; a long time later, the Watergate scandal...which
are the things that were found out. These people were the plumbers
of the division, the men that carried it out."
In 1966 and '67, Felix
Rodriguez is in charge of the task force the CIA sends to Bolivia
against Ernesto 'Che' Guevara. "He used several names. He is
there and he ends up participating directly in the murder of Che.
Also there, in another position, is Antonio Veciana. He is there as
a bank consultant in La Paz but he runs the center which is coordinating
intelligence gathering in the rear guard, working with the Bolivian
intelligence services.
"This is very interesting
because we are then going to see this whole group in the second large
operation they organize, which is advising the secret police of Latin
America. We are going to see Felix Rodriguez in 1980 in Argentina,
we are going to see Posada in Venezuela..."
Luis Posada Carriles next
appears in Venezuela.
"Posada says he arrived
in Caracas in 1969, which is not true, he arrived in '67. What is
happening is that he is a CIA advisor and it doesn't suit him in his
book to talk about that; he says he was recruited in Miami by a chief
of DIGEPOL. He's a tremendous storyteller. In reality, Posada is already
there in '67 helping DIGEPOL as a CIA advisor.
"After that we are
going to see Orlando Bosch's group: Virgilio Paz, Alvin Ross, Dionisio
Suarez in Chile after '73. We are going to find 'Mono' Morales Navarrete
in Venezuela and Felipe Rivero in Chile...That is to say that this
group is going to be spread out in Latin America with actions everywhere."
All of them have devoted
themselves, besides the subversive activities, "to drug smuggling,
which began when they were training for the Bay of Pigs," says
the general.
"The planes came from
Miami to Guatemala loaded with weapons, ammunition, personnel, and
they returned...even with blood plasma. They were even smuggling blood
plasma which Manuel Artime commercialized with the dictatorship of
Anastasio Somoza. Drugs started to be included, cocaine."
Phillips was head of Operation
40 from 1960 to 1973..."It is assumed that in '73 Operation 40
was 'discontinued,' as the North Americans say, but that is absolutely
not true.
"You have to remember
that in '73, the Watergate scandal broke out. Who were the ones who
broke into the offices of the Democratic Party? This same group. We
are talking about Bernard Baker, Eugenio Martinez, Frank Sturgis,
Ferry Hemming, and we learned this from the documents from the Church
Commission.
"And after he got
out of prison, Eugenio Martinez came to Cuba. Martinez, alias 'Musculito,'
was penalized for the Watergate scandal and is in prison for a time.
And after he gets out of prison - it's the Carter period, the period
of dialogue, in '78, there is a different international climate -
Eugenio Martinez asks for a contract and one fine day he appears on
a boat here... and of course he didn't make any big statements, he
didn't say much that we didn't know but he talked about those things,
about this Operation 40 group, about what they had done at the Democratic
Party headquarters..."
And who are directing the
operation against Allende, asks Escalante. "In the first and
second part, David Phillips, first as chief of the operations group,
and afterwards he moved up to Western Hemisphere division chief of
the CIA until 1975. He participates in that and participates in the
formation of Operation Condor, which was formed in 1974 when the first
meeting of intelligence chiefs of the Southern Cone is held in Santiago,
Chile." The veterans of Operation 40 will also participate in
Operation Hoja de Parra, which Argentinian intelligence organizes
to spy on political emigres throughout Latin America.
Then they appear in Operation
Calypso, part of the Nicaraguan contras: "That is to say, when
the Argentinian army sends Col. Osvaldo Rivero, first to Miami and
then to Honduras, with a group of Argentinian specialists, they fail
and the Cubans from Operation 40 have to come; Felix Rodriguez and
Luis Posada who in '85 replace the Argentinians and transfer the general
headquarters from Tegucigalpa to San Salvador. And the El Aguacate
air base which belonged to the Hondurans stops being the main base
of air supplies..."
All of the operations carried
out, after a certain time, by members of Operation 40 are operations
called "autonomous" where the CIA officer who directs the
terrorist group -- we're talking about terrorist "action"
groups, as they call them -- discusses the objectives of that group,
approves it, facilitates all necessary resources "and afterwards
reads about the results in the newspaper."
About the Kennedy case,
Escalante recalls how Cuban intelligence services would receive in
the '60s much information from North Americans, from Cubans outside
of the country and from Central Americans, about subversive activities.
"By correspondence...
Letters would arrive that many times, of course, they would come without
a return address or with a fake address. And we started to have information
from these figures through this means.
"There is a source
who participates in a meeting in Miami in the year '63 in a CIA safe
house and who, from what I remember, was related to Veciana, very
close to Veciana. This source identifies Luis Posada Carriles, Pedro
Luis Diaz Lanz and, I believe, the Novo Sampol brothers...and that
same source later recognizes Lee Harvey Oswald as one of the participants.
"The last time we
heard about this source was in the '70s when he refers to a meeting
with Antonio Veciana and Phillips in Puerto Rico," says Escalante.
"I'm convinced that
they wanted to kill Kennedy in different places. Probably that Dallas
had better conditions. But I'm under the impression from some very
fragmented information I had access to one time, that they wanted
to assassinate him in Miami. And I can't exclude, without confirming
it, because this information is very relative, that these people had
been gathered there for that reason...
"There is another
source, who is Maria Lorentz, who relates something similar to this,
that is to say that she was in a meeting in Miami, that she saw these
people, that she went with them to Dallas, around November 20."
Escalante underlines how
a Cuban, Manuel "Manolito" Rodriguez Orcarberro, arrives
in Dallas two months before the Kennedy assassination "and he
leaves afterwards at full speed."
There he opens an office
of Alpha 66, where Oswald will enter at one time, according to the
testimony of the assistant police chief of Dallas.
"This Cuban sought
asylum in 1960 in the Brazilian embassy together with two known CIA
agents. Who were they? Ricardo 'El Mono' Morales Navarrete and Isidro
Borgas, a figure of Mexican origin who looks a lot like one of the
figures who is with Oswald handing out proclamations supposedly in
favor of Cuba in New Orleans - all of that which was a show put on
where Carlos Bringuier goes to challenge them, a fight erupts, and
the police arrest all of them..."
And who is the boss of
Rodriguez and of Alpha 66? "Antonio Veciana, from Operation 40.
That same Veciana whose testimony would lead Gaeton Fonzi to interview
Luis Posada in Caracas when he was in prison, due to the similarity
between the plan he prepared to assassinate Fidel in Chile and the
Kennedy assassination."
Even more: the name that
one of the "cameramen" used in Chile is Ramon Medina "which
is a pseudonym Posada later used in Ilopango."
There are several sources
who place Luis Posada Carriles in Dallas on November 20, 1963, says
Escalante.
The ex-chief of Cuban security points to a recent investigation by
the Dutchman Wim Dankbaar: "There are elements which even say
that Posada was one of the shooters, which cannot be ruled out because
Posada is an expert marksman.
"Posada who is an
expert marksman who graduated from a North American military school.
Posada who afterwards becomes, together with Orlando Bosch and all
of that gang, one of the leaders of the terrorist groups. Within the
mechanism of Operation 40. Posada who since then has always been protected
by U.S. authorities, protected by the Cuban American National Foundation,
protected by Jorge Mas Canosa."
The assassination of Kennedy
could not have been an improvised action in any manner, says Escalante.
"If they detoured Kennedy from the avenue where he was traveling
to drive around a park, it wasn't for any other reason than to slow
down the car to be able to fire at him. Because this famous detour
to Dealey Plaza makes no sense. Evidently this makes the vehicle travel
at 20 kilometers per hour. And there the fatal shots are fired, from
behind and from ahead.
"It had to be a complex
operation in which a large group of people participated, because if
they shot at him from three shooters' nests which had to have an element
of communication as well, to have the means to get out of that place
and afterwards to get out of Dallas. We are talking about between
10 and 15 people in the least of cases."
Returning to the subject
of the explosion of the Cuban airplane in 1976, Escalante underlines
that, in the weeks preceding the attack, Orlando Bosch is in the Dominican
Republic, goes to Nicaragua, and then to Caracas with a fake Dominican
passport.
"Allegedly invited
by Orlando Garcia who if he wasn't head of DISIP at that time was
chief of personal security for Carlos Andres Perez. This at the same
time that Mono Morales Navarrete had become head of division 54 of
DISIP.
"Navarrete arrived
when Posada left DISIP, in '74, to organize that front of the Industrial
and Commercial Investigations Office. A CIA front which was probably
connected with Operation Condor...Why does Posada go over to DISIP?
Why does he have disagreements? If he is operations chief of DISIP,
he has contact with the U.S. embassy, he's supported by the CIA. Why
is he tired of torturing, which is what he did there at DISIP?"
According to reports from
the time, at the office of Posada's detectives agency in Caracas they
also found plans for the assassination of Orlando Letelier, which
occured in Washington on September 21, barely two weeks prior. "Bosch
had coordinated the operation in Santiago where he met with General
Manuel Contreras, head of DINA." (Chilean secret police)
"In '74, Bosch had
already gone to Chile with Virgilio Paz, Alvin Ross, Jose Dionisio
Suarez to offer himself to Contreras and Pinochet as hit men for Condor...
The same Bosch who in 1976 returns to the Dominican Republic, then
goes to Nicaragua, meets with the Somoza dictatorship, and then to
Venezuela for this operation...Bosch arrives in Venezuela in September
and the blowing up of the Cubana airplane was on October 6.
"Where do instructions
come from? Where is the plan drawn up? It is drawn up in Caracas.
Who are in Caracas? Bosch, Posada and Morales Navarrete. Those are
the three figures who are there. This is perfectly documented. As
if that weren't enough, Morales Navarrete is an FBI informant, they
passed him the bill themselves in '82 for that reason. The FBI was
aware of everything they were doing. Probably the CIA gave them the
objectives with that cover of autonomous operations. Who was head
of the CIA in '76? George Bush Sr. And so...as clear as day! Was Posada
still with the CIA?
"In a declassified
document from July 1976, the CIA says it broke off with Posada because
it had suspicions that he was involved in drug smuggling. That's what
it says, that's what it says... when David Phillips gave Veciana a
quarter million dollars so he could go to prison for 18 months for
a drug trafficking charge," answers the general.
(6) Walter Shapiro, Porter Goss's Spooky Demise, Salon, (6th May, 2006)
If George W. Bush were presiding over a normal administration, there would be nothing spooky about Porter Goss' abrupt resignation Friday afternoon. It would be painfully evident from Bush's forced rhetoric ("Porter's tenure at the CIA was one of transition") and Goss' comically overblown boasts ("The agency is on a very even keel, sailing well") that the CIA director was sacked for ineptitude.
As the normally mild-mannered Ivo Daalder, a former staff member at the National Security Council under Bill Clinton, put it, "Porter Goss was such an absolute disaster for the agency and our national security that his departure comes not a day too soon." Daalder, now at the Brookings Institution, castigated Goss for creating "a climate of fear and intimidation at the CIA that produced a reluctance to take risks, which is the last thing you want in an intelligence agency."
Normally under Bush, promoted-above-your-abilities incompetence is not a firing offense unless, of course, you drown an entire city. True, Josh Bolten, the new White House chief of staff, has been trying to put a few new faces on the flight deck of the "Mission Accomplished" administration. These transitions - like the long goodbye for White House spokesman Scott McClellan - have been carefully orchestrated rather than cobbled together like this one, without even the slightest hint of a successor for Goss.
"If you believe the White House explanation that this is all part of Josh Bolten's reorganization, then this was done in a surprising fashion," said Rand Beers, a terrorism expert who served in four administrations before resigning from the Bush White House in early 2003. "This makes me believe that it's the cover story."
For those practiced in connecting the dots, little artistic training is needed to speculatively link Goss' here's-your-hat-what's-your-hurry departure with the bribery scandal surrounding jailed former GOP Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham.
NBC News reported Thursday night that the CIA is investigating whether a top agency official, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, improperly steered a $2.4 million contract to his close college friend Brent Wilkes, a defense contractor implicated in the Cunningham case. Wilkes reportedly supplied prostitutes to Cunningham at poker parties that Foggo also attended, though the CIA official denies seeing the female entertainment.
There is no obvious connection between Goss and Cunningham, aside from their having served together in the House for 13 years. But the real mystery is how Foggo became the CIA's executive director, the official in charge of day-to-day operations at the entire agency: He was a midlevel field officer with a procurement background when Goss appointed him in 2004. A CIA spokeswoman, who did not want her name used, said Thursday that the two men met when Foggo testified before the House Intelligence Committee, which Goss chaired from 1997 until 2004, when Bush made him the CIA director. No date was provided for Foggo's testimony before Goss' committee.
Of course, the Foggo-Wilkes connection may have nothing to do with the sudden change in Goss' career arc. Daalder posed the speculative question, "Was there an intelligence blunder that we don't know about -- and that we may never know about?" Certainly, given the disarray at the CIA, it is plausible that the agency could have made a major misjudgment about, say, the Iranian or North Korean nuclear programs.
Despite his brief tenure at the CIA, Goss will always be known as the last spymaster to have held the fabled title "Director of Central Intelligence." The CIA chief's supremacy in hush-hush matters permanently ended with the creation in early 2005 of a new director of national intelligence (DNI), a post held by John Negroponte, the former ambassador to Iraq. With this new governmental layer, Goss went from a globe-girdling figure (presumably even with the power to plan coups) to just another Washington bureaucrat with a boss standing between him and the president.
This still ill-defined relationship between the CIA and Negroponte's office is likely to further complicate the search for Goss' successor. As Richard Clarke, the White House counterterrorism chief under Clinton and during the early months of the Bush administration, said shrewdly, "Good luck trying to get someone to fill that job."
Goss' final accomplishment as CIA director -- such as it was -- was forcing out of her job a highly respected veteran intelligence officer, Mary McCarthy, for the purported leaking of classified information about secret CIA prisons abroad. McCarthy has denied being the leaker -- and her more obvious offenses were serving in the Clinton administration and donating $2,000 to John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. "Goss and company were just looking for someone to fire to prove that they were serious about leak investigation," Beers said. "And they could portray her as political."
As for Goss himself, it is somehow fitting that he leaves office shrouded in cloak-and-dagger mystery. Did the CIA director jump, or was he pushed by a president so complacent in the face of failure that he even keeps Don Rumsfeld around? It may take a deep-cover agent to unravel the gossamer plot lines that produced Goss' goodbye.
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