[Profile and more below]
Washington — Michael Kostiw, chosen by CIA Director Porter Goss to be the agency's new executive director, resigned under pressure from the CIA more than 20 years ago after being picked up for shoplifting, according to past and current agency officials.
While Kostiw — a colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, longtime lobbyist for ChevronTexaco Corp. and more recently staff director of the terrorism subcommittee of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence — has been through the CIA security vetting procedure, final clearance to take the job has not been completed pending review of the allegations. The job is the third-ranking post at the CIA.
In late 1981, after he had been a case officer for 10 years, Kostiw was caught shoplifting in suburban Langley, Va., sources said. During a subsequent CIA polygraph test, Kostiw's responses to questions about the incident led agency officials to place him on administrative leave for several weeks, according to four sources who were familiar with the events but who asked not to be identified.
While on leave, Kostiw told friends he decided to resign. Agency officials at the time arranged for misdemeanor theft charges to be dropped and the police record expunged in return for his resignation and his agreement to get counseling, one former official said.
CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said Saturday that Kostiw had declined a request for an on-the-record interview. Goss also has refused to discuss the matter.
A CIA official who asked not to be identified said Kostiw, who had a top- secret clearance while working for the House committee, "had undergone the security vetting process required of all CIA employees." He has taken a polygraph and psychological examination, according to a friend of Kostiw's.
The CIA official, citing privacy considerations, refused to confirm or deny the events alleged by the former and current agency officials as the basis under which Kostiw previously left the agency.
It was learned Saturday, however, that final adjudication of Kostiw's situation had not yet been completed, although his swearing-in had been scheduled for Monday, according to a friend of Kostiw's.
As executive director, Kostiw would have a major role in budgetary allocations within the agency and personnel matters, including promotions, assignments and discipline. He would "manage the CIA on a day-to-day basis," according to the CIA Web site. He would work with a board that includes the agency's chief financial officer, head of human resources, chief information officer, and chiefs of security and global support.
After leaving the agency in 1982, Kostiw was hired by Texaco Inc. for its Latin America/West Africa division. He came to Washington in 1987 and rose to be ChevronTexaco's vice president for international government affairs, where he managed offices in the United States and abroad.
He also served as vice chairman of the International Republican Institute, a group made up of GOP foreign policy experts that works with the National Endowment for Democracy on political and economic development projects.
Questions about Kostiw were raised as Goss begins his term as director of an agency under fire for intelligence community failures to predict the Sept. 11 attacks and its overstating of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
Meanwhile, administration officials have privately complained to reporters that CIA officials are leaking intelligence, such as a recent downbeat National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq that appeared to undermine President Bush's position that things are going well in that country.
CIA personnel also have become concerned about Kostiw and the other three top House Republican staff members that Goss has brought to the agency from the committee he once chaired. The panel's report last summer on the fiscal 2005 intelligence authorization bill, written primarily by the staff, criticized the CIA's human intelligence activities run by the Directorate for Operations, where Kostiw once worked.
In his sixth day on the job, CIA Director Porter J. Goss began making changes in the embattled agency's leadership, installing in top-level positions four staff members from the House intelligence committee, which he led for six years.
The moves sent a tremor through CIA headquarters at Langley, where officers already nervous about proposals to reorganize U.S. intelligence worried that Goss was acting too hastily. Some also expressed concern that newcomers from the Republican-run House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence would bring partisan sensibilities to their new roles.
Concerns about partisanship and the CIA have been at the forefront of public debate over the agency's future in the past weeks. During Goss's Senate confirmation hearings, Democrats repeatedly pressed him for guarantees, which he gave, that he would leave behind his history of partisan battling when he left Congress to take over the CIA. More recently, some Republican members of Congress and others have accused the CIA of writing and disclosing pessimistic assessments on Iraq to undermine President Bush in the midst of the campaign.
"My hope is they don't come in and do a wholesale change that would do damage to a strategic effort that has produced excellent work on terrorism and a variety of other important issues," said James L. Pavitt, who recently retired as the agency's deputy director of operations. "Does it make a lot of sense to set the place on its head at a time when the nation is under a multitude of threats? They need to listen and learn first."
Yesterday, Goss named as his executive director -- the third-ranking spot at the agency -- Michael V. Kostiw, who most recently has served as staff director of the House committee's terrorism subcommittee. Before that he was a lobbyist for ChevronTexaco Corp. and was at CIA for 10 years in the 1970s and 1980s.
At yesterday's morning staff meeting, the current executive director, A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard, announced he was leaving after 6 1/2 years at the agency. Krongard, a former investment banker, was brought in by former CIA director George J. Tenet to improve management at the agency. Goss, in a statement released yesterday, described Krongard as having brought "energy, dedication and a wealth of new ideas to the agency" and said his efforts "will be remembered."
Goss also named Patrick Murray, the House committee's staff director, to be his chief of staff and Jay Jakub and Merrell Moorhead, two other committee staffers, as special assistants. Moorhead is to deal with strategic planning and Jakub with operations and analysis, according to a senior administration official.
Jakub, who worked as an analyst at the agency before he joined the committee, was staff director of the panel's subcommittee on human intelligence and one of the authors of a highly critical report on the CIA's human intelligence operations.
In the last several years, the House intelligence committee has developed a reputation among some members of Congress and national security agencies for ineffectiveness -- a source of concern yesterday at CIA headquarters. The panel was unable to produce a promised report on prewar intelligence on Iraq and often focused on issues that seemed tangential to the main problems facing the intelligence community, officials complained. In contrast to its counterpart committee in the Senate, the House panel conducted few oversight investigations and held few open hearings. Some committee staff members also had rough working relations with the CIA's leadership and its Directorate of Operations, a small but powerful group within the CIA.
"It's going to cause serious angst at the agency because of the poor relations they have had with the CIA," said Howard Hart, former senior clandestine services officer. "These people will have no credibility in the agency because of their past performance on the House intelligence committee staff."
Another former intelligence officer said: "It looks as though he is installing people known to be partisan politicos and that may have a stifling effect on the staff. When you parachute in with a whole raft of people right away, it doesn't bode well."
"There is great concern about the migration of Hill staffers to the agency because it creates a clash of cultures," another former senior CIA official said yesterday, describing his conversations with agency personnel over the past few days. "Hill people have a loyalty to an individual, not to the institution," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is still in government and is not authorized to speak publicly.
The former official added that during Goss's first week in office the new director has given some the impression that "there is an inner circle" because he has not regularly attended the 8:30 a.m. staff meeting, but has held a meeting with his own staffers.
An administration official familiar with the transition, however, stressed that Goss had just begun.
"It is unfair to draw such conclusions at this time," the official said. Goss, he said, was not at the agency for two days this week, having flown Monday to Florida, where he visited his home after Hurricane Jeanne, and returning Tuesday evening.
There have been similar concerns and anxieties at CIA headquarters when previous directors of central intelligence from outside the agency took over. In 1995, when John M. Deutch became director, he brought in several former Democratic Hill staff members, including Tenet from the Senate committee, who would rise to become director, retiring last August after seven years in that post.
source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A63481-2004Sep30?language=printer 3oct04
Profile (from Seven Futures Advisory Committee)
Michael V. Kostiw is Vice President, International Government Affairs at ChevronTexaco Corporation in Washington, D.C. He serves on the Corporation's Public and Government Affairs Leadership Team, which provides direction and oversight for the ChevronTexaco Public and Government Affairs function in all global energy operations in more than 180 countries in six continents. Kostiw also manages and coordinates the activities of Brussels, London, Houston, and Singapore Public and Government Affairs offices. His staff serves as ChevronTexaco's principal contact point with the U.S. government foreign policy elements such as the Departments of State, Defense, and the National Security Council. The office is also responsible for ChevronTexaco's relationship with international organizations based in Washington, D.C. and New York City, including the embassies, consulates, and United Nations missions of the countries where the company operates.
Kostiw started with Texaco, Inc, in 1982 in the Latin America/West Africa division after a ten-year career with the Central Intelligence Agency. Mike joined Texaco's Washington, D.C. office in 1987 after a failed attempt to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and remained with ChevronTexaco after the merger. He is a graduate of St. Bonaventure University and the Harvard University Foreign Policy Management Program. He speaks Spanish, Italian, Ukrainian, and Russian.
Kostiw, an Army reserve Colonel, commands a Pentagon Military Intelligence Unit. He is vice-chairman of the International Republican Institute and is a permanent member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Mr. Kostiw was born in 1947, is married to Carolyn and they have 3 children.
source: http://www.7revs.org/AdvisoryCommittee/b_kostiw.htm 3oct04
"Same Planet Different World" - As part of the Global Strategy Institute, SEVEN FUTURES identifies and analyzes the driving forces of change shaping seven distinct geographical regions out to the year 2025 and beyond. The seven discrete regions we explore are (1) Latin America & the Caribbean; (2) Europe; (3) the Middle East and North Africa; (4) Sub-Saharan Africa; (5) Russia/Eurasia; (6) South Asia; and (7) East Asia & South East Asia. Each of these regions face growing challenges and important opportunities that will affect the rest of the world...
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to provide world leaders with strategic insights on - and policy solutions to - current and emerging global challenges. Seven Revolutions is directed by Erik R. Peterson, Senior Vice President, William A. Schreyer Chair in Global Analysis, and Director, Global Strategy Institute at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Seven Futures Advisory Committee
HONORARY CHAIRS
Anne Armstrong Chair, CSIS Executive Committee
William Brock CSIS Counselor and Trustee; Chairman, Bridges Learning Systems, Inc.
Michael Galvin Chair, CSIS Finance Committee; President, Galvin Enterprises
Ray Hunt CSIS Trustee; Chairman and CEO, Hunt Consolidated, Inc.
Sam Nunn Chairman, CSIS Board of Trustees
Charles Sanders CSIS Trustee; Chair, CSIS Council on Biotechnology Research, Innovation and Public Policy; Former Chairman and CEO, Glaxo
William Schreyer CSIS Executive Committee; Chairman Emeritus, Merrill Lynch
Dolores Wharton CSIS Trustee; Chairman and CEO, Fund for Corporate Initiatives
MEMBERS
Cheryl Achterberg Dean, Schreyer Honors College, Penn State University
Prakash and Nunda Ambegaonka Bridging Nations Foundation
Vinita Bali Vice President, New Business Initiatives, Coca Cola Corporation
Robert Bott Vice President, Business Integration, Boeing Company
K. David Boyer President and CEO, Mackenzie Associates
Chris Caine Vice President of Governmental Programs, IBM
William Cameron President and CEO, American Fidelity Group
Kelly Carnes President and CEO, TechVision21
Ged Davis Vice President, Global Business Environment, Shell International Ltd.
Michael Gadbaw Vice President and Senior Counsel, International Law and Policy, GE
Fariborz Ghadar William A. Schreyer Professor of Global Management; Director, Center for Global Business Studies, Pennsylvania State University
Gerrit Gong Assistant to the President for Planning, Brigham Young University
David Hale Global Chief Economist, Zurich Group, Scudder Kemper Investments
Karl Hausker Managing Consultant, PA Consulting Group
Susan Herrington National Vice President, American Cancer Society
Morty Kaplan Chairman, TransChem
Eugene A. Kelly Chairman, Marshwinds Advisory Company
Michael Kostiw Vice President, International Government Relations, ChevronTexaco Corporation
Paul Laudicina Vice President & Managing Director, Global Business Policy,
A.T. Kearney, Inc.
Francine Lamoriello Senior Director, Baker, Donelson, Bearman & Caldwell
Riel Miller Principal Administrator, Advisory Unit to the Secretary-General, OECD
Debbie van pstal Executive Vice President, Council on Competitiveness
James W. Ragland Economic Research Group, Aramco Services Company
William K. Reilly Chairman and CEO, Aqua International Partners; Director, WWF
Susan Rochford Vice President of Government, Regulatory and Industry Affairs, Underwriters Laboratories, Inc.
Noah A. Samara Chairman and CEO, WorldSpace Corporation
Maurice Tobin Senior Partner, Tobin, French & Dillon
Stephen Wallenstein Senior Lecturing Fellow and Executive Director, Duke Global Capital Markets Center
source: http://216.12.139.57/advisory/index.cfm 4oct04
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