Porter Goss

Goss was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, the son of Virginia Holland (née Johnston) and Richard Wayne Goss, who was an executive of the Scovill Manufacturing Company (a corporation controlled by the Goss family).[2][3][4][5] He attended Camp Timanous in Raymond, Maine and was educated at the Fessenden School. In 1956, he graduated from the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut.

Goss graduated from Yale University in 1960 with a Bachelor of Arts in ancient Greek.[6] (Goss also speaks Spanish and French.) At Yale, he was in Timothy Dwight College[7] and he was a member of Book and Snake, a secret society.[8] He was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity alongside William H. T. Bush, the uncle of President George W. Bush, and John Negroponte, who served as an ambassador for George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, and as Goss's superior in the post of Director of National Intelligence from 2005 to 2006.[9] Negroponte solicited Goss's assistance, while Goss was Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, to get the position as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the first term of the second Bush administration.

In his junior year at Yale, Goss was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency. He spent much of the 1960s—roughly from 1960 until 1971—working for the Directorate of Operations, the clandestine services of the CIA. There he first worked in Latin America and the Caribbean and later in Europe. The full details are not known due to the classified nature of the CIA, but Goss says he has worked in Haiti, Santo Domingo, and Mexico.

Goss, who has said he has recruited and trained foreign agents, worked in Miami for much of the time. Goss was involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, telling The Washington Post in 2002 that he had done some "small-boat handling" and had "some very interesting moments in the Florida Straits".

Towards the end of his career as a CIA officer, Goss was transferred to Europe, where, in 1970, he collapsed in his London hotel room because of a blood infection in his heart and kidneys.[10][11] Fox News reported that Goss believes he was poisoned.[6]

Goss first retired from the CIA in 1971, and moved to Sanibel, Florida.[6][12][13]

After his return to CIA service as the presidentially-appointed Director (DCI/DCIA), Goss again retired from the CIA on May 5, 2006.

After his first retirement from the CIA, Goss moved to Sanibel, a resort town off the coast of Fort Myers. In 1974, he was elected to the City Council and then was elected mayor by the council. In 1983, Bob Graham, then Governor of Florida, appointed Goss to the Lee County Board of Commissioners.

Representative Goss talks to the press.

In 1988 Goss ran for Congress in what was then the 13th congressional district of Florida, which was located on the Gulf Coast and stretched from Sarasota to Naples. The seat was vacated by Connie Mack III when he ran successfully for the U.S. Senate. In the Republican primary—the real contest in this heavily Republican district—Goss's main opponent was former congressman Louis A. "Skip" Bafalis, who had represented much of the area for 10 years before making an unsuccessful bid for governor (the 13th had been carved out of the western portion of Bafalis' territory after the 1980 census).

Bafalis was initially heavily favored due to his name recognition. However, he garnered only 29% of the vote to Goss's 38%, largely due to the fact that Goss's campaign was much better financed. Goss went on to defeat Bafalis handily in the runoff election. In the general election, Goss faced the former first president of Common Cause, Jack T. Conway. Goss won in a rout, taking 71 percent of the vote. He was easily re-elected seven times from this district, which was renumbered as the 14th District after the 1990 census. The district was so heavily Republican that Goss faced a Democrat only one other time, in 1996; he won with 73 percent of the vote. He was unopposed for reelection in 1990, 1994, 1998, and 2002, and faced only third-party opposition in 1992 and 2000.

In Congress, Goss had a mostly conservative voting record. However, he tended to be much more supportive of environmental legislation than most of his fellow Republicans. For instance, he supported the Kyoto Protocol and strengthening the Environmental Protection Agency. Most of his major legislation has been intelligence authorization bills, with some local constituent-services bills.

The legislation he sponsored included a constitutional amendment to establish term limits limiting representatives to no more than three consecutive terms of four years.[14] Major bills sponsored by Goss include a bill to limit congressional pay raises to no more than Social Security cost-of-living adjustments[15] (unpassed), The Public Interest Declassification Act of 1999[16] (unpassed), and the USA PATRIOT Act.

He served in Congress for 16 years until his appointment by President George W. Bush to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). While in the House, Goss served as chair of the House Intelligence Committee from 1997 until 2005 and the vice-chairman of the House Rules Committee. He also helped establish and served on the Homeland Security Committee. As a congressman, Goss consistently and emphatically defended the CIA and supported strong budget increases for the Agency, even during a time of tight budgets and Clintonian slashes to other parts of the intelligence budgets. In mid-2004, Goss took a very strong position, during what had already been announced as his last congressional term, urging specific reforms and corrections in the way the CIA carried out its activities, lest it become "just another government bureaucracy".

• Ripon Society
• Council on Foreign Relations
• CIA employee 1962–1971
• Mayor Sanibel, FL (1975-1977, 1981–1982)
• U.S. Congressman, Florida 14th (January 3, 1989 to September 23, 2004; numbered as 13th 1989–1993, resigned)
• CIA Director September 22, 2004 to May 5, 2006 (resigned)

Porter Goss addresses the media after President Bush nominated him to be the director of the CIA.

Following the June 3, 2004, resignation of CIA director George Tenet, Goss was nominated to become the new director on August 10 by President George W. Bush.[24][25] The appointment was challenged by some prominent Democrats, including former Vice President Al Gore and Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV). Senator John D. Rockefeller IV (D-WV), vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, expressed concerns that Goss was too politically partisan, given his public remarks against Democrats while serving as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Another Democratic member of the committee, Ron Wyden (D-OR), expressed concerns that given Goss's history within and ties to the CIA, he would be too disinclined to push for institutional change. In an interview carried out by Michael Moore's production company on March 3, 2004, Goss described himself as "probably not qualified" for a job within the CIA, because the language skills the Agency now seeks are not languages he speaks and because the people applying today for positions within the CIA's four directorates have such keen technical and analytic skills, which he did not have when he applied to the Agency in the early 1960s (see below).

The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee endorsed his nomination by a 12–4 vote on September 20, 2004, and on September 22 he was confirmed by the Senate in a 77–17 vote. Republican senators unanimously backed him, along with many prominent Democrats, including the two Democratic senators from Florida, Bob Graham and Bill Nelson, and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle.

While at the CIA, Goss reportedly began to reverse the acts of the previous directors. Goss and others noted in numerous reports and writings their opposition to risk aversion "which is the last thing you want in an intelligence agency".[26]

Resignation

President George W. Bush and Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte (left) accept Goss's resignation in the Oval Office.

On May 5, 2006, Goss's resignation was announced at a joint press briefing with President Bush at the White House. There was speculation in the press concerning the reasons for the sudden announcement. His choice for the position of Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Kyle Foggo, was enveloped in an extensive procurement scandal within days of Goss's resignation.[27]

The Los Angeles Times reported: "Goss was pushed out by Negroponte after clashes between them over Goss's management style, as well as his reluctance to surrender CIA personnel and resources to new organizations set up to combat terrorism and weapons proliferation."[28] Negroponte for his part had been an ambassador and a consumer of intelligence. Goss made the point with Negroponte that pursuing changes Negroponte reportedly desired, in the manner upon which Negroponte reportedly insisted, contradicted the intent of the intelligence reform legislation to add to the capabilities of the existing agencies in the intelligence community, not to detract and diminish those existing capabilities. The Weekly Standard also noted that Goss wanted intelligence analysts to get more exposure to intelligence gathering and Negroponte planned to move them from the CIA over to DNI, farther from intelligence gathering. While the editors of The Weekly Standard sided with Goss in this dispute, they believe Goss was forced out for other reasons:

[W]e are concerned that Goss left, or was eased out, for reasons of greater policy significance. And if this is the case, Goss's leaving is not a good sign. Goss is a political conservative and an institutional reformer. He is pro-Bush Doctrine and pro-shaking-up-the-CIA. John Negroponte, so far as we can tell, shares none of these sympathies. Negroponte is, therefore, more in tune with large swaths of the intelligence community and the State Department. If Negroponte forced Goss out and is allowed to pick Goss's successor—if Goss isn't replaced with a reformer committed to fighting and winning the war on terror, broadly and rightly understood—then Goss's departure will prove to have been a weakening moment in an administration increasingly susceptible to moments of weakness.[29]

Goss was replaced by Negroponte's Principal Deputy Director for National Intelligence, four-star Air Force General Michael Hayden.

Excerpt from the History of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence:[30]

The idea of a Director of National Intelligence (DNI) dates to 1955 when a blue-ribbon study commissioned by Congress recommended that the Director of Central Intelligence should employ a deputy to run the CIA so that the director could focus on coordinating the overall intelligence effort.

Robert Novak's May 11 column claimed "Goss faced a disintegrating CIA. The major analytic functions were passed to the DNI. Special operations were going over to the Pentagon. Negroponte was no help to Goss. Although bizarre reasons for Goss's resignation have been floated on the Internet, sources say Negroponte simply suggested his time was up."

Goss is an active speaker on the lecture circuit.[31] Goss registered in April 2015 as a lobbyist representing Turkey.[32] He is also a member of the ReFormers Caucus of Issue One.[33]

Goss was appointed as co-chairman of the Board of the then-new Office of Congressional Ethics in July 2008.[34] He would continue to serve in that position until 2015.

On February 16, 2016, Goss expressed his support for former Speaker Dennis Hastert in a letter to Judge Thomas M. Durkin.[35]

Goss is an avid organic farmer.[36]

In October 2022, Goss joined the Council for Responsible Social Media project launched by Issue One to address the negative mental, civic, and public health impacts of social media in the United States co-chaired by former House Democratic Caucus Leader Dick Gephardt and former Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey.[37][38]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Porter J. Goss.

• United States Congress. "Porter Goss (id: G000336)". Biographical Directory of the United States Congress.
• Appearances on C-SPAN