New CIA chief to trim agency role

WASHINGTON — The expected choice of Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden as the new director of the CIA is only a first step in a plan to permanently change the mission and functions of the legendary spy agency, intelligence officials said Saturday.

Porter Goss, who was forced to resign Friday, was seen as an obstacle to an effort by John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, to focus the agency on its core mission of combating terrorism and stealing secrets abroad.

Hayden, 61, who aides to President Bush said will be nominated to the post Monday, is Negroponte's deputy and he is regarded as an enthusiastic champion of the agency's adoption of that narrower role.

A senior intelligence official said Hayden, in a recent presentation to the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, had sharply criticized Goss for resisting that transformation.

Goss was seen as trying to protect the CIA's longtime role as government's premier center for intelligence analysis, but under Hayden much of that function is intended to move elsewhere.

"There will be a serious change to the structure of the agency," said one intelligence official, who like other CIA officials and administration officials who were interviewed were granted anonymity because they are not allowed to speak publicly about intelligence matters.

As it turns its focus to intelligence collection, through the spying operations overseas that are run by the CIA's new national clandestine service, the agency faces a challenge from the Defense Department, which is expanding its own spying operations abroad.

Hayden has spent his career in the military, but his relationship with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has never been close. A Bush administration official said Saturday that Hayden was being selected, in part, because he had demonstrated an ability to set aside a parochial military mind-set and look at the broader picture.

Negroponte himself has had a difficult year trying to bring the Pentagon's vast intelligence operations under his control. Historically, the Pentagon has controlled more than 80 percent of the nation's intelligence budget.

The administration official said that Bush had chosen Hayden, a former director of the National Security Agency (NSA), in part because of his success in running a large, complex organization.

The official said Bush also thought Hayden would improve morale at the CIA, which has plummeted under Goss, regarded within the White House and the agency as an ineffectual leader.

As he leaves the agency, Goss is widely expected to be joined by other members of his inner circle, many of whom he brought with him to the CIA. Kyle Foggo, a longtime agency officer Goss elevated to the agency's No. 3 job, plans to resign in coming days, a senior intelligence official said Saturday.

Foggo is a longtime friend of Brent Wilkes, one of the defense contractors whose role is described in the indictment earlier this year of Randy "Duke" Cunningham, a Republican congressman from California who was forced to resign. Foggo's ties to Wilkes have been investigated by the CIA's inspector general.

Beyond those personnel moves, Hayden will inherit an agency in some disarray, if he is confirmed in the post, a process likely to involve a public review of his prior role in domestic electronic surveillance as director of the NSA.

He will bring political clout that might be welcomed by the battered managers of CIA, but some officers might resent him as a CIA outsider, a military man and a representative of Negroponte, according to former agency officials.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino on Saturday said it was "categorically untrue" that Goss lost Bush's confidence almost from the start of his 19-month tenure, but neither Goss nor the White House offered a public explanation for his resignation.

As he left his home in Washington, D.C., on Saturday, Goss told CNN that his departure is "just one of those mysteries" and declined to elaborate. He then flew to Ohio, where he delivered a commencement address at Tiffin University.

"If this were a graduating class of CIA case officers, my advice would be short and to the point: Admit nothing, deny everything and make counteraccusations," Goss, a former CIA officer, told the audience at Tiffin.

A spokeswoman for Goss, Jennifer Dyck, defended the outgoing director.

"Director Goss is going to leave an agency that has bigger graduation classes of new officers than any other time in history," Dyck said.

Material from The Washington Post is included in this report.