Porter Goss: The Laura Edition

* laura posts the Porter Goss/barry seal pic that i posted the other day (and larisa linked to at huffpo) and laura says:

"What's interesting is that Wilkes and Foggo spent a lot of time in Central America (Honduras, El Salvador, later Panama -- Wade too), when Foggo was a CIA money man for the contras during Iran Contra and Wilkes would bring congressmen down from Washington to get a first hand look at the secret operation. Negroponte, another San Diego native (like Wilkes and Foggo), was also around, Oliver North was around, Porter Goss clearly in an earlier era was doing Central American operations for the CIA. It wouldn't seem to be too much of a stretch to wonder if they didn't run in overlapping networks, small informal fraternities of right-wing CIA-linked operatives and the private networks the government turned to to conduct operations that were supposed to evade oversight and basically not exist."

* laura has more:

"Interesting. Now we know a bit more: the Watergate suite was presumably paid for by Wilkes. The poker parties were happening every week, for years. At least among congressmen Charlie Wilson was a regular. And some folks from the CIA. Interesting.
[snip]
The pattern is interesting, and not only for what it says about Cunningham: it speaks also about the ends of the people who cultivated him, who targeted him specifically for a purpose, in this case, Wilkes and Wade. Not totally unlike the way say CIA officers would identify foreign assets they wanted to recruit and go about recruiting them. Was the Wilkes/Wade operation wholly just about making a lot of money, or something else? Why does Wilkes seem from so early on to be so connected to elements of the CIA? There's his long friendship with Foggo, but there are hints that at least Wilkes considered himself a kind of de facto CIA adjunct or associate, a friend of the Cold War era Agency, particularly in Central America. Perhaps it was mostly vanity on his part, but his very clubby association certainly does seem to have elements that were more than winks and bragging rights. It seems reciprocated to some degree."