The Incredible Shrinking CIA

The resignation of Porter Goss highlights how the spy agency's role has been diminished by Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte

Time

The sudden and unexpected resignation of Porter Goss as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency on Friday highlights a long bureaucratic battle that's been going on behind the scenes in Washington. Ever since John Negroponte was appointed Director of National Intelligence a year ago and given the task of coordinating the nation's myriad spy agencies, he has been diluting the power and prestige of the CIA. From day one, he supplanted the CIA Director as the President's principal intelligence adviser, in charge of George W. Bush's daily briefing. Other changes followed, all originating in the law that created the DNI — and all traumatic for CIA fans. Then, earlier this week, in a little noticed move, Negroponte signaled that he would be moving still more responsibility from the CIA to his own office, including control over the analysis of terrorist groups and threats....

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In a speech in San Antonio last week, Negroponte's top deputy, Michael Hayden, declared that an office largely under Negroponte's control — the National Counterterrorism Center, or NCTC — was now in charge of dictating the role other agencies will play in terror analysis. Hayden said too many agencies were in the analysis business and that the NCTC, like a team captain, " will make these calls for the entire IC ." This may seem like bureaucratic minutiae, but it reflects an important struggle over a key aspect of American intelligence. Even though some diminishment of the CIA was all but guaranteed by the passage of the DNI law 18 months ago, each new detail of the Negroponte's implementation has been watched for how much it may curtail the power of the once-supreme CIA.

In the speech, Hayden also said Negroponte's office would be in charge of "liaison" relationships with foreign intelligence services — long the treasured turf of the CIA — which have historically produced much of the most important intelligence, according to a former senior CIA official. Negroponte, Hayden said, "is aggressively overseeing our relationships with foreign intelligence services to help detect and prevent attacks against ourselves and our friends and allies.... As the head of our intelligence community, he routinely meets with foreign intelligence leaders, and he has visited many of our major allies" — an activity that comes easily to Negroponte as a career diplomat and ambassador.

CIA supporters are upset about what they see as the neutering of an agency that helped win the Cold War and worry that it will undermine its human spy responsibilities, of which the CIA is still in charge. "It's a huge thing going on. It's a huge drama and nobody's picking up on it," the former CIA official said of the DNI's realignment of CIA responsibilities. "CIA feels quite friendless right now. We're seeing more pieces of it just keep being moved to the door." A senior U.S. official sympathetic to the CIA warns that "if the DNI's not careful, the Agency and what it does will be different, and maybe that's what everybody wants. That's OK, but maybe the Agency won't be able to do what everybody wants."...