Chris Van Hollen: “that is exactly right. Very serious consequences for the American people. And that is why it was surprising, I must say…”

“that is exactly right. Very serious consequences for the American people. And that is why it was surprising, I must say, that after George Tenet left the CIA as Director, that the administration decided to replace him with Mr. Porter Goss. Now Mr. Goss is a very decent, well-meaning person. But the fact of the matter is he was the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee at a time when this House failed to ask the hard questions and failed to do its oversight job. It accepted what the administration told them at face value, and it was a rubber stamp when it came to taking the administration's word on intelligence. And yet he was the one they decided to make the head of Central Intelligence. And he brought with him some of the members of his committee staff. He brought his staff director and some of the other people who were very politically close to him, including his staff director, Patrick Murry. And what was the result of that? Well, I think it is important to take us back to, this is what happened right after that appointment at the CIA. And I am reading from a Post story back from November 2004. The deputy director of the CIA resigned yesterday after a series of confrontations over the past week between senior operations officials and CIA Director Porter Goss's new chief of staff that have left the agency in turmoil, according to several current and former CIA officials.…”