Go, Goss, go! (Updated)

Bush-friendly CIA Director Porter Goss has abruptly resigned. No stated reason. No designated successor.

CNN said: "Taking a look at what's out on the Internet -- not much controversy involving the director himself." Are they kidding? Or does CNN log on to some other internet? Perhaps they should take a look at Justin Rood's extraordinary work at TPM Muckraker. You know -- just to get a whiff of what real reporting smells like.

To the best of my memory, no previous Director of Central Intelligence has resigned so abruptly. Obviously, something major has occurred. I feel certain that this development is related to the Wilkes/Wade/Cunningham bribery scandal -- to Hookergate -- and possibly to the disengenuous debate over Mary McCarthy of the CIA Inspector General's office.

Goss elevated Brent Wilkes' partner "Dusty" Foggo -- a former cop and Assistant D.A. from an undistinguished college, who became a CIA desk jockey after doing a stint in Honduras as the money guy for the contras. I'm reminded of a recurrent theme in Victor Ostrovsky's books: In Mossad (and presumably in most other spy agencies), you don't advance unless you have a "horse" -- someone powerful pulling you forward. Goss was Foggo's horse -- although, as we shall see, there is some question as to who rode whom.

The CIA's Inspector General (the Agency's "internal affairs" office) has been looking into Foggo's connections with the notorious briber Brent Wilkes, who "owned" a number of semi-fake companies which received ultra-fat government contracts; part of the cash went to fund Republican candidates. (Any actual work could always be subcontracted. We've seen this same scam at work in the Katrina clean-up effort.) Foggo, it is alleged, helped to steer CIA contracts toward Wilkes and his fellow bribe-meister Mitchell Wade.

The only person convicted in the scandal so far, Congressman "Duke" Cunningham, is -- at last report -- doing time in Butner, North Carolina. I do not know to what degree he or Wilkes have cooperated with authorites, but Wade reportedly has spilled beans. He revealed that Wilkes -- with the help of a shady limo service -- has, over the course of more than a decade, run prostitutes in and out of the Watergate and Westin Grand hotels. The girls (and guys?) serviced congressmen and other powerful figures.

Ken Silverstein, in a Harpers piece titeld "Red Lights on Capitol Hill," wrote:

I've learned from a well-connected source that those under intense scrutiny by the FBI are current and former lawmakers on Defense and Intelligence comittees—including one person who now holds a powerful intelligence post.

That sounds an awful lot like former congressman Porter Goss -- indeed, nobody else seems to fit the bill.

A CIA spokesperson characterized any suggestion of Goss' involvement as "irresponsible" and "untrue." That was roughly a week before the DCI suddenly resigned.

Which brings us to another key sentence in the Silverstein piece:

Apparently photographs were taken, and investigators are anxiously procuring copies. My heart beats faster in fevered anticipation.

As I said previously, we can presume that the congressmen were not dumb enough to take photos of themselves partying with working girls. Which means that the photos were taken without their permission.

Which means that -- in all likelihood -- we are dealing with a sting operation. A blackmail ring.

We've seen this sort of thing before. In a previous article, I noted the parallels to a Nixon-era operation run out of Xaviera Hollander's brothel. One could also mention Tongsun Park, the Georgetown Club, and the Koreagate scandal. One might also note the White House-linked gay prostitution ring operating during the Reagan and Bush I eras -- a ring briefly exposed by the Washington Times. Reverend Moon, owner of that journal, was also a prime mover in the Koreagate affair. The Moon empire also has strange but undeniable ties to GOPUSA and Jeff Gannon, the male prostitute who may have stayed overnight in the White House on a number of occasions -- or so Secret Service records would indicate. Quite a few rumors have linked Gannon to the Wilkes/Wade hooker haven -- but so far, these seem to be only rumors.

Blackmail. Savor that thought for a moment.

Now ask yourself: If incriminating photographs of Porter Goss exist, did they play a role in his being tapped for that august position at CIA? One is reminded of a quote attributed to LBJ: "I don't trust a man unless I have his pecker in my pocket."

Before Goss, Bush was bedeviled by DCI George Tenet, who played the role of Janus: Tenet pled loyalty, yet the press kept printing leaks indicating that CIA analysts disagreed with the rationales for war. Bush, who values loyalty above all, presumed that he could rely on greater fealty from Porter Goss.

Blackmail photographs of Porter Goss partying with hookers would explain his ascent as well as his fall. But how would Bush's neocon handlers have known of such photos (presuming that they exist) unless the Wilkes/Wade operation had ties that went as high as the White House itself?

Update: Have you noticed how the sad Patrick Kennedy business is everywhere on the news -- yet the media still refuses to devote much time to hookergate?

Update 2: Goss indicated that he will leave before the designation of a successor. So who will mind the store? Certainly not the embattled Foggo. The Deputy Director of the CIA right now is Vice Admiral Albert M. Calland, III -- a former Navy SEAL who served as the commander of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group. You can read a 2003 interview with Calland here. (He got the CIA job in July of 2005.) The comments about UAVs and UUVs are of some interest. (I've long theorized that UAV testing was one possible cause for reports of... Nope. Not gonna mention that acronym. Not in this blog.) Calland, who supports Donald Rumsfeld's call for greater reliance on Special Forces, looks like a leading candidate for the top spot.

This is troubling. As we noted previously, Rumsfeld's Special Operations Command -- SOCOM -- stands poised to unleash Green Berets and Navy SEALS, both in foreign nations and domestically, after Big Wedding II. Special Forces will have authority to spy and to make arrests of U.S. citizens without warrant. If Calland becomes DCI, the civilian agency won't be in any position to hold the Special Forces in check -- indeed, CIA and SOCOM will work in tandem.

I'm already starting to miss Goss!

Update 3: Justin Rood has some interesting scuttlebutt...

Goss was told to fire Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, his troublesome Executive Director, and Goss refused. That's what we're hearing now from knowledgeable sources. But there's a lot of contradictory information.