On the Road to Hookergate

Whoa...

CIA Director Porter Goss resigned unexpectedly Friday, leaving behind a spy agency still struggling to recover from the scars of intelligence failures before America's worst terrorist attack and faulty information that formed the U.S. rationale for invading Iraq.

The BBC adds:

No reason was given for the move. Mr Goss has served in the role for less than two years, since being chosen by Mr Bush to replace George Tenet.

Here's what Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo has to say:

I don't suppose it anything to do with the fact that Goss is neck deep in the Wilkes-Corruption-and-Hookers story that's been burbling in the background all week. We don't know definitely why Goss pulled the plug yet. But the CIA Director doesn't march over to the White House and resign, effective immediately, unless something very big is up.

Not familiar with Hookergate? Check out TPM Muckraker's great coverage of it.

And here's what Salon's War Room has to say:

CNN seems mystified by the news, and the high-profile way in which Bush announced it seems to suggest that there's nothing unseemly involved. That said, there was a hasty, thrown-together quality to Bush's Oval Office remarks this afternoon, and there's at least a whiff of scandal around Goss: As we noted last week, there's speculation that Goss may have attended poker parties organized by defense contractors implicated in the Randy "Duke" Cunningham corruption probe. One of those contractors has said that he didn't just bribe Cunningham but hired prostitutes for him as well.

And Spencer Ackerman over at The New Republic's Plank blog adds:

So it would appear that you can preside over the total collapse of the CIA, mold it into a mere appendage of the Bush administration and suffer no reprisal. But have one of your chief subordinates get a little too cozy with crooked defense contractors--especially when that coziness involves prostitutes--and the result is Porter Goss riding off into the sunset.

ThinkProgress has put together a primer on the connections between Goss and Cunnignham.

[UPDATE] Salon's War Room updates their post with this para:

Meanwhile, keep an eye on Dusty Foggo, the man Goss installed in the No. 3 job at the CIA. As we've reported previously, the CIA's inspector general is looking into Foggo's oversight of contracts at the agency; NBC says the investigation includes allegations that Foggo steered a $2.4 million to contract to Brent Wilkes, one of the contractors implicated in the Cunningham case. Wilkes and Foggo have been pals since college, and Foggo made the scene at -- and even hosted some of -- the contractors' poker parties.

[PS] Hat tip to my iChat buddy, Jeff Carlson, for alerting me to this. Check out his latest post on the just-announced release of the original versions of the Star Wars movies to DVD.