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Within days of Goss's arrival, a number of top CIA officials began to contemplate retirement, including acting Director John McLaughlin and Executive Director A.B. Krongard. Then, last week, came the abrupt departures of D.O. chief Stephen Kappes and his deputy, Michael Sulick, two pragmatic and tough-minded officers who were regarded almost universally as mission oriented, apolitical and aggressive--exactly the traits Goss was supposedly looking for. Kappes, who had served as station chief in Moscow and the Middle East, was best known at Langley for helping persuade Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi to forswear terrorism and give up his rudimentary WMD program. Kappes, who made multiple trips to Tripoli to seal the deal, was one of the few CIA officers who won high marks from both Republican and Democratic members of the 9/11 commission. Sulick is another former Moscow station chief who, in the words of an ex-spy, "has a New Yorker's quick wit and cynical outlook on life. He'd more likely skewer both sides" than favor one political party over another, the officer says.
What's most unsettling about the resignations is that they seem to have grown out of petty disagreements that could easily have been avoided. The first began with a tempest over a longtime Goss aide, Michael Kostiw, whom Goss intended to name as the agency's executive director, but who lost the job after it was revealed he had left the CIA 20 years earlier when he was arrested for allegedly shoplifting a pound of bacon. (The charges were dropped after he agreed to resign.) Although CIA insiders argue that reporters could have been tipped off by a CIA alumnus who remembered Kostiw's undistinguished departure, Goss aides feared that officials in the agency leaked the bacon caper to the press to embarrass Goss upon his arrival at Langley, former officials say.
Then, on Nov. 5, Kappes and his deputy, Sulick, complained in a meeting with Goss and Patrick Murray, Goss's chief of staff, about Murray's pointed critique of a Sulick memo laying out a proposed D.O. outreach program for members of Congress. Twice in that session, Sulick tossed pieces of paper at Murray. After Goss left for another meeting, Sulick, who is in his 50s and is a Vietnam vet, told Murray, who is 40, that he wasn't going to be treated like some "f___ing Democratic Hill puke," says a CIA source. Disturbed by the episode, Murray asked Kappes a few days later to reassign Sulick. Kappes refused, and the two took their dispute to Goss, who told both men to work things out. The matter festered over a weekend, and when Kappes came to work on Monday, he told Goss he and Sulick would be resigning. Goss tried to persuade Kappes to stay on, says a CIA source, but both men quit anyway. Sulick could not be reached for response. Kappes declined to comment.