Executive Session
CONGRESSIONAL RECORD
SENATE
Sept. 22, 2004
EXECUTIVE SESSION
NOMINATION OF PORTER J. GOSS TO BE DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, I believe PORTER GOSS is the right man certainly in this crucial time in the history of our intelligence community.
PORTER GOSS spent over a decade at the CIA. He had the opportunity to see it from the inside, to work there in a distinguished career. For the last few years, he has had the opportunity to serve in the Congress, to serve on the Intelligence Committee in the House, and then for the last few years as the chairman. I think it is significant that he has been the chairman for the last few years at the same time many of us have served on the Senate Intelligence Committee, when the force of history has compelled all of us to examine as we have never done before the role of the intelligence community in the world we live in today, a world confronted by the failures of the intelligence community, where we have taken a magnifying glass for the last several years as Members of the House and Members of the Senate to see exactly what is wrong with the intelligence community. There has only been a handful of people who have had that experience. Some of them are in this room today.
PORTER GOSS has distinguished himself in that exercise as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, as the leader in the House when we went through the joint Senate-House investigation. I had the chance to watch him through that endeavor. I had the chance to watch him learn, as all of us did, about the tragedy of September 11 and how the intelligence community did not function the way we want it to function.
In PORTER GOSS we will have someone who knows the community from the inside, but also has stood back, been on the other side, been on the outside, and has looked at it to see what is wrong, and has looked at it in a critical time in our history. I think that is so very important as we begin the task as a country and he begins the task as the new Director of the CIA to bring about needed reform.
This is a tough job, but I believe PORTER GOSS is a tough man. I believe he is the right man. Some people might say this is an impossible job. I do not know if it is an impossible job, but it is a very difficult job. Let us think about it for a moment.
This is the man who walks in to see the President every morning, walks in to the Oval Office and greets him, gives him the intelligence report. I think we all understand there has to be a chemistry between the President and the Director; that if there isn't, that relationship-and we have seen that in the past with Presidents and Directors, sometimes there isn't that relationship-if there isn't that relationship, they do not talk and the country suffers.
There has to be a relationship of trust, of confidence. Yet that same man who comes in to see the President every morning where there has to be that relationship, that trust, that rapport, is also a man who has to tell the President what the President does not want to hear; a man who has to have the guts to do it; a man who has to look the President in the eye and have the guts to tell the President of the United States, the most powerful man in the world, Mr. President, that is not the way it is; or maybe a more difficult thing to say, Mr. President, we messed up, we were wrong 6 months ago or 3 months ago, what we told you was not right; or maybe this is the toughest thing of all to say to the President, Mr. President, we don't know.
And when we look at some of the problems, some hypothetical, some factual, some of the things that occurred, those have been some of the problems. That man has to also be able to look at the President of the United States and say, Well, here is what we think it is, but also there are people in the intelligence community who have a minority view. That man has to have the guts to tell the President that as well. That is a difficult job.
This man also is the person who protects us every day in this world because he is the one who has to be in charge of putting together all of the intelligence. And today it is the intelligence that protects us just as much as our national defense. The facts he comes up with, our intelligence community comes up with, are our first line of defense today. Yet we are telling this man today, if you get this job, at the same time you are carrying on this war on terrorism and you are providing these facts, we expect you to go as fast as you can to carry out reform.
Further, we tell this man that he has to deal with whatever today's crisis is. What we are focused on, of course, is terrorism today. But he has to deal with the long-term crises-nuclear proliferation, what is going on in China, you pick the challenge. He has to be 5 years out, or 10 or 15 years out, and he had better not get it wrong.
This is a new era for the CIA, a new era for the intelligence community which came to maturity in the Cold War, the Soviet Union versus the United States. We sort of understood in those decades when we developed that intelligence community. Official cover worked pretty well. The new head of the intelligence community has to continue that change, continue to change away from that. We have to move out from the official cover to a nonofficial cover. That is just one of the changes that has to take place. It is a tough job.
I think when you vote on someone's confirmation, a lot of this is kind of a gut check. You don't know what the exact issues are going to be in the future. This is an intensely personal job, as I have pointed out. The person who runs the agency, I suspect we are going to end up giving a lot more power. If PORTER GOSS is confirmed, he may end up with an entirely different job later on. He is going to run a big intelligence community, but it is also an intensely personal job in that relationship with the Congress and that relationship with all of the consumers. And the ultimate consumer, of course, being the Commander in Chief, the President of the United States.
I think it gets down to a lot of the person. What do you think of this guy, or woman if that be the case? Can they handle it?
I think it is helpful to talk to some of the persons who know this person best. I was struck by the testimony of the two Senators from Florida, Senator Bob Graham, of course, the senior Senator, but also significantly the chairman of the Select Intelligence Committee of the Senate, and a pretty harsh critic of the intelligence community and of the administration. This is what he had to say:
Let me say at the beginning that I am not unbiased. I believe that Porter Goss is an exceptional human being and will be an exceptional head of our Central Intelligence.
Senator Graham also said:
Mr. Chairman, I have known PORTER GOSS for well over two decades, and I can tell you from personal experience that he is uniquely qualified to be here today as the President's nominee to serve as the Director of Central Intelligence. He is a man of great character, unusual intelligence, a tremendous work ethic, and an outstanding personal and professional standard of integrity.
Senator Graham added that as Governor of Florida, when he first met the nominee:
Party affiliation did not matter then. What was necessary, good men and women who could carry out a difficult task.
My colleagues, I believe party affiliation does not matter today. The challenge that PORTER GOSS, on a much magnified scale, will face as Director of Central Intelligence is very analogous to the challenge he faced 20 years ago in restoring integrity to his local community and completing a very complex project.
As to PORTER GOSS's fitness to serve as an independent, unbiased DCI, this is what Senator Graham of Florida said.
. . . when it comes to the intelligence community, Congressman Goss has, in my judgment, a balanced perspective, a perspective gained both as an insider and then as an outsider. For a decade, early in his career, Congressman Goss served our Nation in both the Army and the CIA. He knows firsthand the value and the risk of clandestine operations. Since he has been in Congress, especially as a member and chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, he came to know the agencies from an oversight capacity.
Senator Graham continued:
Some have said he is too close to the intelligence agencies, that he would be too protective of the status quo. Well, most of you served with Porter and myself on the joint inquiry into the events of 9/11. I believe you would join me in saying from that experience Porter is a man who will be independent in his judgments and unflinching in his criticism where he believes they are necessary.
Senator Graham concluded with these words:
I am confident he will not be a part of the problem but rather a leader in taking us toward principled, thoughtful solutions when it comes to reforming the intelligence community. I strongly recommend the confirmation of Porter Goss.
Senator Bill Nelson also participated in the September 14 Goss confirmation hearing. These are some of the things Senator Nelson had to say:
I think we need intelligence reform. I think we need it now. And I think Porter Goss is the man to lead the effort.
Senator Nelson also called Porter Goss:
. . . a uniquely gifted individual whose public life has been illustrative of being nonpartisan, fair, and independent.
The Senator further pointed out that:
Those characteristics in this town that is so highly charged with partisanship are sorely needed in a Director of Central Intelligence.
Those statements are from his two colleagues on the other side of the aisle from Florida.
I think sometimes it is good to know and talk to people who know someone best.
Mr. President and Members of the Senate, let me conclude by saying I have known PORTER GOSS for a long time. I have dealt with him on issues not just in the area of intelligence. Sometimes you get to know people in the Senate and the House working in Congress on a variety of issues.
PORTER GOSS and I had shared a tragic situation when we had constituents, hemophiliacs who acquired AIDS because they had to take massive amounts of blood because of their condition. The blood was tainted. It is a long story. I will not go into it now. But the blood was tainted because we thought there was an error made by the Federal Government, that the Federal Government did not become involved early enough, that the Federal Government made mistakes.
I had constituents. I listened to their tragic story. PORTER GOSS listened to some constituents of his. So we both moved in our respective bodies to try to bring about some help for these folks. I saw how compassionate he was and how strongly he felt about the issue and what he did about it and how he took that passion and feeling he felt for those folks in wanting to do something about it. I worked with him. I traveled with him to Haiti, the poorest country in this hemisphere. I have seen his compassion for the people of Haiti.
I have worked with him on the Intelligence Committee. I will be honest with you, I have had the occasion, many times, to pick up the phone and call across the Capitol and ask PORTER: What is really going on in the intelligence community? What is really going on at the CIA? I will tell you, each time he had an insight that was unrivaled, or rivaled by very few people I have talked to, of what was really going on inside the intelligence community. That is an insight that came about from his years of experience inside the community and his years of experience of watching the community in the oversight capacity while being on the committee and of being the chairman.
He has a passion and an understanding of the intelligence community and of what needs to be done to change it. He understands the importance of human intelligence. Long before it was fashionable in this town to be saying, oh, we have to have more human intelligence, PORTER GOSS was pushing, pushing, and pushing the intelligence community for more human intelligence.
It may not have been flashy, it may not have been with a lot of big speeches, but he was there. He understood it. He understood what the needs were. This man gets it. If you want someone to lead the reform of this community, if you want someone who understands what the problems are, who can do it from the inside, if you want someone who will have the guts to report to the President of the United States and tell it like it is, PORTER GOSS is your man.
So, Mr. President, I am proud to come to the floor today to recommend to my colleagues, based on my personal experience with this man, what I have seen over the years, that we vote for his confirmation. He has a tough job and, yes, it may be almost an impossible job, but I think he is the right man at the right time at this point in our history.
I thank the Chair and yield the floor.