Senate Select Intel Comm Briefed by Spy Manager (CIA Goss critic) Who Quit

[DeepModem Mom]

WP: Panel Briefed by Spy Manager Who Quit
Senators in Private Session Hear From Robert Richer, Critic of CIA Chief Goss
By Walter Pincus and Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 22, 2005; Page A09


Robert Richer, the outgoing No. 2 official in the CIA's clandestine service, made an unusual appearance at a closed session of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence yesterday to answer questions about how his concern over a lack of leadership at the agency triggered his retirement.

The afternoon session was not publicly announced; neither senators nor staff members who attended would even confirm Richer's presence during their weekly session devoted to "hot topics." "He was impressive," was all one participant in the meeting would say yesterday, insisting that because of committee rules he could not be identified.

Richer's departure is a setback for the CIA and particularly CIA Director Porter J. Goss, who selected him for the job less than a year ago. In leaving as assistant deputy director of operations, Richer joins a number of senior clandestine managers, including several with Middle East expertise, who have left since Goss took over the agency one year ago Saturday. Richer is a former CIA station chief in Amman, Jordan, and had headed the Near East division.

On Sept. 14, less than a week after Richer announced his retirement at a Directorate of Operations leadership meeting, he had a private session with Goss to explain his decision.

According to sources close to both men, Richer was blunt in his assessment of Goss's tenure and urged Goss, a Republican former congressman from Florida who once chaired the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, to communicate a vision for the agency and demonstrate leadership that senior career officials could rally behind....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/21/AR2005092102013.html

[existentialist]

1. Wouldn't it be interesting to know

what he said there?

[DeepModem Mom]

3. Let's hope it leaks out. nt

[gumby]

2. Lesee,

Bush has DESTROYED:
The Army
The National Guard
The Military
The FBI
The CIA
The National Security
The Economy
The Media
The National Cohesiveness

And now, as Hurricane Katrina has made clear, Bush is the midst of destroying actual and real humans. But, that's the point, isn't it?

[UpInArms]

4. some history on Goss

excerpt:

Seated with Seal in that nightclub in Mexico City in 1963 are men whose lives and careers comprise a large part of America’s recent secret history, we learned. Arrayed around the table were members of the CIA’s much-whispered about assassination squad, Operation Forty, first helmed by then-Vice President Richard Nixon.

Barry Seal was one of them. Perhaps so was Porter Goss.

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.”

...more...

http://www.madcowprod.com/mc6512004.html