Jay Rockefeller: “Porter Goss has been very well vetted. What has come from this discussion back and forth are several things. One, he is…”

“Porter Goss has been very well vetted. What has come from this discussion back and forth are several things. One, he is a very good man. Second, he knows the intelligence business. Third, I think there is still a question of whether he has run any larger organizations, and that becomes a factor. The third had to do with partisanship. It was interesting to me that a number of people said everybody around here is partisan. Of course, that is true. But this has to do with a nomination for the Central Intelligence Agency. That is a position where the national security law forbades a nominee from being political in any way, shape, or form. I think the question really is with him. I want to believe it is true, but based upon the record, I cannot accept it as true to this point, and I have to look at what has happened as opposed to what he says will happen; that he has been very partisan and very partisan within the field of intelligence and very partisan within the field of intelligence very recently at a time, obviously, when we are engaged in a broad election.”