Down the Memory Hole: Kostiw latest victim of post-Goss purge

By Ken Silverstein

When Joseph Stalin took power in the former Soviet Union, his regime not only physically eliminated his political opponents but also sought to remove any photographic record of their existence. The most famous case was that of Leon Trotsky, Stalin's chief rival, who was assassinated in Mexico in 1940 and who before that had been airbrushed out of official photographs.

A similar (if much less bloody) purge is now underway at the CIA, where new director Michael Hayden is systematically seeking to eliminate any evidence that his predecessor—Porter Goss, whose stewardship is widely considered to have been a disaster—ever ran the agency.

By now, most of the people Goss brought in to senior positions—a group known derisively as the Gosslings—are long gone. That includes Goss's hatchet man, chief of staff Patrick Murray, as well as several aides whose names have surfaced in connection with the Duke Cunningham scandal—most notably Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, the agency's former executive director. (Foggo's end came soon after FBI agents raided his office and home two months ago.)

Now it seems that the last of the Gosslings are being targeted for extermination. Last week, it was announced that Jennifer Millerwise, the spokeswoman Goss brought over with him from Capitol Hill, was leaving for a job in the private sector. The agency, a source told me, is likely to replace Millerwise with Mark Mansfield, who served as spokesman under George “Slam Dunk” Tenet.

More significantly, I'm told that Michael Kostiw, senior adviser to Goss, is also being pushed out. Kostiw was the only Gossling that was thought to have performed well, and a number of senior agency officials urged Hayden to keep him on. However, the source told me, Kostiw ran afoul of Hayden's boss, Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte. It appears that Kostiw's grim assessment of the situation in Iraq, where he traveled regularly over the past several years, displeased Negroponte, who “wasn't happy with his criticism,” said the source. “He said [Kostiw] wasn't being supportive enough of the policy.”

In the end, though, it was Kostiw's association with Goss that proved fatal. “They've already cut out the main Gosslings,” said the source in discussing the cause of Kostiw's dismissal. “Now they're probing down into the protective tissue to make sure there are no further infections.” At this rate, he joked, the agency may refuse to hang Goss's portrait at CIA headquarters along with those of his predecessors, and thus the airbrushing of Goss's tenure will be complete.

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