The CIA: Dusty's Troubled Trails

Until a few days ago, Kyle (Dusty) Foggo was one of the most feared men at the CIA. A hot-tempered former cop, Foggo was chosen by CIA Director Porter Goss to be the powerful No. 3 man at the agency, in charge of hiring and firing. Foggo seemed to put a lot of effort into firing. With Goss's blessing, he carried out what amounted to a purge of the agency, forcing out most of the CIA's top management, as well as spies and analysts who were thought to be too close to former director George Tenet, or too close to the Democrats. When Foggo walked down the corridor, people worried he was coming for them.

Maybe Foggo should have been the one looking over his shoulder. When he arrived for work at Langley on Friday morning, Foggo was stopped at the door and stripped of his blue security pass. Upstairs, agents from the Defense Department, CIA, FBI and IRS were searching his seventh-floor office and carting off his effects. Agents also raided his house in suburban Virginia. For weeks investigators had been probing Foggo's possible involvement in the bribery and corruption scandal that snared Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham, the California Republican who was sentenced to eight years in prison for taking millions in bribes from defense contractors. Brent Wilkes, an unindicted co-conspirator in the case, is one of Foggo's closest friends. Federal investigators want to know if Foggo used his position to help Wilkes get CIA contracts. (Lawyers for both Foggo and Wilkes have maintained that their clients did nothing wrong.)

Foggo's troubles may help to explain Porter Goss's sudden departure from the agency earlier this month. According to sources close to Goss and the White House, who would not be named talking about private conversations, administration officials had been pressuring Goss to get rid of Foggo. But Goss resisted. It was a risky stand to take. For months, former and current intel officials had privately complained to the White House that the CIA was suffering under Goss's poor management. Goss's resistance to firing Foggo, despite the investigation closing in on him, made top administration officials, including National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, lose faith in Goss's judgment.

Foggo seemed an unlikely man for a top CIA job. He wasn't a case officer but a logistics specialist who'd spent years shuffling resources at CIA stations in Central America and Europe. Stories quickly circulated inside CIA headquarters about Foggo's stormy career. While stationed in Vienna in the late '80s, Foggo allegedly beat an Austrian citizen with a baseball bat after the man cut him off in traffic, according to three former and current senior intelligence officials who didn't want to be named talking about internal matters. The sources say the incident was serious enough that the Austrian government lodged a complaint with the U.S. Embassy in Vienna, but that nothing came of it. A source familiar with Foggo's account, who asked not to be named because of the matter's sensitivity, says Foggo tells a different story. Foggo said that after a man on a bicycle crashed into him, a police officer who arrived on the scene tried to shake down Foggo for money, this source says. Foggo says he merely gave him a tongue-lashing, berating him for being a crooked cop. Foggo denied any beating took place.

During his time in Vienna, Foggo was also the subject of a CIA investigation for allegedly pursuing relationships with women without properly informing his employer--a potential security risk--according to two former CIA officials who also would not be named talking about agency procedures. Foggo's lawyer, William Hundley, did not respond to numerous requests for comment. But according to a source close to Foggo, who wouldn't speak about intelligence matters on the record, Foggo denied improprieties with women. Investigators concluded that Foggo hadn't posed a serious security risk.

Despite the mishaps, Foggo thrived, in part because of his political skills. Posted overseas in the '80s and '90s, he gave sightseeing tours to visit-ing American VIPs, and endeared himself to members of Congress and their staffs. According to a source close to Goss's inner circle, who declined to be named talking about the former director, Foggo became an informal source for Goss and his staff. At the time, Goss was a Florida congressman and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and welcomed inside information about the CIA under Tenet.

On rotations back to Washington in the '90s, Foggo met up with his boyhood friend Wilkes, who was looking to set up shop as a defense contractor. Wilkes began hosting poker games in posh Washington hotel suites that attracted members of Congress, including Representative Cunningham. Wilkes hoped the games would help him get a leg up in Washington. It worked. Wilkes transformed himself from a small-time CPA into a multimillion-dollar defense contractor.

Foggo, too, was transformed, from a midlevel bureaucrat to a top CIA official. When Goss left Congress to head the CIA, his staffers advised him to tap Foggo, their former informant, as the agency's number three. But as NEWSWEEK first reported, things started to unravel for Foggo when the CIA's internal investigators began looking into a contract Foggo's office awarded to a company run by one of Wilkes's relatives. Before Foggo left office last week, he said through a CIA spokesman that he had overseen many contracts, and that all of them were "properly awarded."

It's now up to Goss's replacement--presumably Gen. Michael Hayden, if he survives the confirmation process--to clean up the mess the Goss crew left behind. Last week Negroponte said he wants to appoint Stephen Kappes to fill the job of deputy director. The announcement was a very public slap at Goss. A former Marine and veteran case officer with a storied career, Kappes was head of the CIA's clandestine service when Goss took over the agency. Years earlier, when Bill Clinton was president, Goss's Capitol Hill aides had feuded with Kappes over an incident at the CIA station in Belgrade. CIA officers, informed they were about to be attacked, fled the building without first burning all of the secret papers. Goss's aides demanded that the station chief be fired, even though an investigation, led by Kappes, showed no secrets had been compromised. Kappes refused to fire the official. Goss and his aides never forgot it, and when Goss became director Kappes was one of the first to be shoved out. Kappes, who now lives overseas, has been back to Washington for talks and is believed to be interested in returning to Langley. Thanks to the previous tenants, there will be plenty of work for him to do--and undo.