CIA chief outlines revised agency structure with more overseas operations

The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) will "not rely solely" on information from friendly intelligence services and but will do more on its own to gather intelligence, CIA chief Porter Goss said Thursday.

Outlining his blueprint for a revised CIA structure at a meeting with CIA employees, Goss said he would rebuild the agency as a global operation with more spies operating overseas, local news reports said.

The spies would work under different kinds of cover in more countries, he said.

"We are getting more and more global. We opened new stations and bases and we've reopened some old ones. We are developing new and creative ways to get more and more of our officers out of Washington," he said.

"We are definitely going to be using new cover arrangements overseas, because we have to," said Goss, a former Florida congressman who has overseen the agency for one year.

CIA would have the authority to set standards for the entire intelligence community on things relating to human espionage, he said.

"Our national interests and our security needs are global," said the former chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. "We are going to be in places people can't even imagine."

Goss, a one-time CIA agent, said the CIA would not rely solely on foreign intelligence services to gather intelligence. "Unilateral operations will return to be part of the governing paradigm for the CIA," he said.

Since Goss took office, the CIA has lost some of its senior intelligence analysts, and the agency's preeminent position within the US intelligence community after the creation of the national intelligence director.

The CIA has been under criticism for its failure on intelligence related to the Sept. 11 attacks and prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons.

Source: Xinhua