The CIA: Dusty's Troubled Trails

On rotations back to Washington in the '90s, Foggo met up with his boyhood friend Wilkes, who was looking to set up shop as a defense contractor. Wilkes began hosting poker games in posh Washington hotel suites that attracted members of Congress, including Representative Cunningham. Wilkes hoped the games would help him get a leg up in Washington. It worked. Wilkes transformed himself from a small-time CPA into a multimillion-dollar defense contractor.

Foggo, too, was transformed, from a midlevel bureaucrat to a top CIA official. When Goss left Congress to head the CIA, his staffers advised him to tap Foggo, their former informant, as the agency's number three. But as NEWSWEEK first reported, things started to unravel for Foggo when the CIA's internal investigators began looking into a contract Foggo's office awarded to a company run by one of Wilkes's relatives. Before Foggo left office last week, he said through a CIA spokesman that he had overseen many contracts, and that all of them were "properly awarded."

It's now up to Goss's replacement--presumably Gen. Michael Hayden, if he survives the confirmation process--to clean up the mess the Goss crew left behind. Last week Negroponte said he wants to appoint Stephen Kappes to fill the job of deputy director. The announcement was a very public slap at Goss. A former Marine and veteran case officer with a storied career, Kappes was head of the CIA's clandestine service when Goss took over the agency. Years earlier, when Bill Clinton was president, Goss's Capitol Hill aides had feuded with Kappes over an incident at the CIA station in Belgrade. CIA officers, informed they were about to be attacked, fled the building without first burning all of the secret papers. Goss's aides demanded that the station chief be fired, even though an investigation, led by Kappes, showed no secrets had been compromised. Kappes refused to fire the official. Goss and his aides never forgot it, and when Goss became director Kappes was one of the first to be shoved out. Kappes, who now lives overseas, has been back to Washington for talks and is believed to be interested in returning to Langley. Thanks to the previous tenants, there will be plenty of work for him to do--and undo.

© 2006