Behind the Goss Toss

Behind the Goss Toss
By Richard Sisk
The New York Daily News

Sunday 07 May 2006a

Washington - A little-known White House advisory board convinced a reluctant President Bush to launch yet another high-profile shakeup of the nation's intelligence community and can CIA Director Porter Goss, sources said yesterday.

Bush had already gotten an earful from Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte on the shortcomings of Goss, but the final push came from the "very alarmed" President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, intelligence and Congressional sources said.

Alarms were set off at the advisory board by a widening FBI sex and cronyism investigation that's targeted Kyle (Dusty) Foggo, the No.3 official at the CIA, and also touched on Goss himself.

The 16-member bipartisan board, now headed by former Goldman Sachs executive Stephen Friedman, has the mandate to conduct periodic assessments on "the quality, quantity and adequacy of intelligence collection."

The board, which includes longtime Bush confidant and former Commerce Secretary Don Evans, joined in the growing chorus inside and outside the CIA calling for Goss' ouster, persuading Bush to act, sources said.

The result was the awkward Oval Office announcement Friday at which neither Goss nor Bush gave a specific reason for Goss' return to Florida. Goss told CNN yesterday his resignation was "just one of those mysteries."

White House spokeswoman Dana Perrino said a "collective agreement" led to the decision to find a new CIA director, but "reports that the President had lost confidence in Porter Goss are categorically untrue."

Bush was expected to name a new spy chief, possibly as early as tomorrow, with Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, Negroponte's top deputy, and White House homeland security adviser Fran Townsend heading up a short list.

But the spillover from the continuing FBI investigation, coupled with a parallel probe by the CIA's inspector general, could impact on what were already expected to be difficult Senate confirmation hearings for the new director.

The investigations have focused on the Watergate poker parties thrown by defense contractor Brent Wilkes, a high-school buddy of Foggo's, that were attended by disgraced former Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham and other lawmakers.

Foggo has claimed he went to the parties "just for poker" amid allegations that Wilkes, a top GOP fund-raiser and a member of the $100,000 "Pioneers" of Bush's 2004 reelection campaign, provided prostitutes, limos and hotel suites to Cunningham.

Cunningham is serving an eight-year sentence after pleading to taking $2.4 million in bribes to steer defense contracts to cronies.

Wilkes hosted regular parties for 15 years at the Watergate and Westin Grand Hotels for lawmakers and lobbyists. Intelligence sources said Goss has denied attending the parties as CIA director, but that left open whether he may have attended as a Republican congressman from Florida who was head of the House Intelligence Committee.



"Nine Fingers," Poker-Playing CIA Man, ID'd
By Justin Rood
TPM Media

Sunday 07 May 2006

A lot of folks, including us, noticed a strange detail in one of the first articles about Brent Wilkes' poker-and-more parties.

"Another player was a CIA agent known as 'Nine Fingers,' so named because he lost one of his digits while on assignment," the San Diego Union-Tribune reported over a week ago in what appeared to be an almost throwaway bit of color.

The Mafia-esque moniker has attracted attention and jokes -- but little new information, until now: Newsweek magazine is the first to identify Nine Fingers as Brant Bassett, whom they also say is "a former Goss aide."

He may be a more central character in our story than the SDUT made him out to be.

Bassett is reported to have been a case officer with the CIA's Directorate of Operations, where Foggo worked. Their paths crossed a number of times over the years and they became friendly, I'm told, which isn't a stretch, given that two publications now put Bassett in poker games with Foggo and Wilkes.

An enduring mystery to this fiasco is why Porter Goss promoted "Dusty" Foggo to the very top of the CIA. Now, informed sources are speculating that Bassett may be the link that explains that mystery, at least in part. Bassett, a counsel and staff director for the Human Intelligence panel of Goss' House Intelligence Committee, had ample opportunity to introduce Goss and his close aide Patrick Murray to Foggo. Did he?

I gave Mr. Bassett a call a few days ago in the hopes he'd be willing to discuss the matter, but he didn't call me back. Newsweek reported that he didn't return their call, either.

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