Porter Johnston Goss (; born November 26, 1938) is an American politician and government official who served as the head of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2004 to 2006. He was the last Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) from 2004 to 2005, then became the first Director of the Central Intelligence Agency following the passage of the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, which abolished the DCI position and replaced it with the Director of National Intelligence on December 17, 2004
Before taking over the CIA, Goss was a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Florida's 14th congressional district from 1989 to 2004. His district, numbered as the 13th District from 1989 to 1993, included Fort Myers, Naples and part of Port Charlotte. He served as Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence from 1997 to 2004, was a co-sponsor of the USA PATRIOT Act and was a co-chair of the Joint 9/11 Intelligence Inquiry.
Goss resigned as Director of the CIA on May 5, 2006, in a sit-down press conference with President George W. Bush from the Oval Office. On May 8, Bush nominated U.S. Air Force General Michael Hayden to be Goss's successor.
Education and early CIA career
Goss was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, the son of Virginia Holland (née Johnston) and Richard Wayne Goss, who was an executive of the Scovill Manufacturing Company (a corporation controlled by the Goss family). He attended Camp Timanous in Raymond, Maine and was educated at the Fessenden School. In 1956, he graduated from the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Connecticut.
Goss graduated from Yale University in 1960 with a Bachelor of Arts in ancient Greek. (Goss also speaks Spanish and French.) At Yale, he was in Timothy Dwight College and he was a member of Book and Snake, a secret society. He was a member of the Psi Upsilon fraternity alongside William H. T. Bush, the uncle of President George W. Bush, and John Negroponte, who served as an ambassador for George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush, and as Goss's superior in the post of Director of National Intelligence from 2005 to 2006. Negroponte solicited Goss's assistance, while Goss was Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, to get the position as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the first term of the second Bush administration.
In his junior year at Yale, Goss was recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency. He spent much of the 1960s—roughly from 1960 until 1971—working for the Directorate of Operations, the clandestine services of the CIA. There he first worked in Latin America and the Caribbean and later in Europe. The full details are not known due to the classified nature of the CIA, but Goss says he has worked in Haiti, Santo Domingo, and Mexico.
Goss, who has said he has recruited and trained foreign agents, worked in Miami for much of the time. Goss was involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, telling The Washington Post in 2002 that he had done some "small-boat handling" and had "some very interesting moments in the Florida Straits".
Towards the end of his career as a CIA officer, Goss was transferred to Europe, where, in 1970, he collapsed in his London hotel room because of a blood infection in his heart and kidneys. Fox News reported that Goss believes he was poisoned.
Goss first retired from the CIA in 1971, and moved to Sanibel, Florida.
After his return to CIA service as the presidentially-appointed Director (DCI/DCIA), Goss again retired from the CIA on May 5, 2006.
Government career
After his first retirement from the CIA, Goss moved to Sanibel, a resort town off the coast of Fort Myers. In 1974, he was elected to the City Council and then was elected mayor by the council. In 1983, Bob Graham, then Governor of Florida, appointed Goss to the Lee County Board of Commissioners.
In 1988 Goss ran for Congress in what was then the 13th congressional district of Florida, which was located on the Gulf Coast and stretched from Sarasota to Naples. The seat was vacated by Connie Mack III when he ran successfully for the U.S. Senate. In the Republican primary—the real contest in this heavily Republican district—Goss's main opponent was former congressman Louis A. "Skip" Bafalis, who had represented much of the area for 10 years before making an unsuccessful bid for governor (the 13th had been carved out of the western portion of Bafalis' territory after the 1980 census).