CIA Director Porter Goss Resigns

From the AP: CIA Director Porter Goss Resigns

CIA Director Porter Goss resigned unexpectedly Friday, leaving behind a spy agency still battling 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...

But... but... who will prosecute agency whistleblowers now?

The release of this information on a Friday afternoon- where news stories go to die- seems suspicious.

Anyone want to place bets on what the real reason for this resignation is? Or heck, any reason at all, since Goss did not bother to provide one. The AP article has no official answer, other than a vague assumption that this is about White House 'shake-ups' (hint to AP: the CIA is, in theory, not a direct part of the White House. Try again.). This is a glaring hole in the story thus far.

The director of the CIA did not randomly decide today that his work was finished and he's gonna call it quits. This was an immediate, and unexpected, resignation. That there was no replacement ready further solidifies that point. President Bush tried to play it off that his role was merely transitional. Sure it was, George.

I imagine the reason will come out sooner rather than later; the vagueness in the initial reports leaves much room for suspicion. I know he was implicated in the growing Hookergate scandal I mentioned in the previous entry- could it be because of that? That's the most obvious explanation for now.

Or was he just not performing well? Agency power struggle? Is it punishment for a failure of intelligence like when Tenet 'resigned'? Is a Presidential Medal of Freedom headed his way? Is it because he remembered that he was not qualified for the job?

There'll be lots of spin here, but this is definitely more bad news for the White House.

[Update: Goss releases a statement that basically says nothing. Blog speculation here, here, and here.]