Porter Goss

Porter J. Goss

Porter Johnston Goss (born November 26, 1938 in Waterbury , Connecticut ) is an American politician ( Republican Party ). He served as the 19th Director of Central Intelligence from 2004 to 2006 ; He had previously been a member of the US House of Representatives since 1989 , where he represented the 14th district of Florida .

Life

Goss studied at Yale University , where he graduated in Classical Philology in 1960 . He served in the United States Army in the reconnaissance field from 1960 to 1962 ; then he worked from 1962 to 1972 for the CIA. He is said to have worked as an undercover agent for the CIA for about ten years . a. also in Europe and Latin America . According to his own account, he was stationed in Miami during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 . Allegedly he was with the most famous division of the CIA, the Directorate of Operations . In Haiti he worked with the dictator Papa Doc Duvalier's intelligence service and in Nicaragua with dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle .

In addition to English, Goss speaks French and Spanish.

After a life-threatening infection with staph he went in the early 1970s on the island with the same name village Sanibel south of Fort Myers / eastern Florida in pension after being in a hotel room in Washington, DC had collapsed unconscious. He then became a businessman and investor. He lived in Sanibel for 30 years. Goss founded the weekly Iceland Reporter there with two former colleagues . In December 1974 he won the election for mayor and was a member of the Sanibel City Council until 1982. From 1983 to 1988 he was Commissioner of Lee County .

He was elected to the House of Representatives for the 13th and later for the 14th Florida Congressional District as a Republican MP and served in Congress from January 3, 1989 until his resignation on September 23, 2004. Goss was from 1997 chairman of the Secret Service Committee ( Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence ) and vice chairman of the House Rules Committee .

On September 11, 2001 , at the time of the attacks on the World Trade Center in the Capitol, he was having breakfast with Senator Bob Graham and the Pakistani intelligence chief, General Mahmoud Ahmad . The general was later dismissed as a possible al-Qaeda sympathizer. In 2002, Goss served with Bob Graham as chairman of the Senate Committee of Inquiry into the work of the intelligence services before and after September 11th. Both had previously refused such an investigation. On August 10, 2004, Goss was nominated by President George W. Bush to succeed George Tenet as director of the CIA.

In Michael Moore's film Fahrenheit 9/11 , Goss is featured as a supporter of the USA PATRIOT Act . One scene not shown in the film is an interview from March 2004 in which Goss says, "I wouldn't get a job with the CIA today. I'm not qualified." On May 5, 2006, he resigned from this post without giving any reason. A successor was not known at the time of his resignation. On May 30, Michael V. Hayden was finally installed as his successor.

He spends his summers on Fishers Island, New York, and runs the organic retreat farm in Virginia.

Web links

Commons : Porter Goss  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Porter Goss in the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress (English)
• Porter Goss in the nndb (English)
• CNN: Porter Goss resigns as CIA chief
• CV with the CIA
• Inaugural address by Porter Goss at the US Senate September 14, 2004 ( Memento of March 30, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
• John Simkin: CV

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 'Fahrenheit 9/11' Interview with the nominated CIA chief Porter Goss: "I am not qualified." ( Memento from December 2, 2007 in the Internet Archive )