E Pluribus Unum

Fox News is baffled. Shepard Smith can't fathom it. Bill Kristol is very surprised at the suddeness.

Fact is, no one knows why Porter Goss, Director of Central Intelligence, resigned without giving warning to even those close to him.

Of course, there's more to it than meets the eye.

Georgia10:

It may not be the hookers. It may not be his possible participation in a million-dollar bribery scheme affecting our national security. It may be that he hated his job, and the CIA hated him. Or it may just be that Goss decided to spent time with his family.

But the press has a duty to find out why one of our nation's top intelligence officials just up and quit all of sudden on a Friday afternoon.

The simple fact is that when you have an alleged driving under the influence or sleep-driving story and it involves a Kennedy, the press is going to be all over that. What's new. But here's what does get my attention. There's another pretty tawdry story that's out there -- one about members of Congress getting sauced up at rollicking parties and set up with hookers by crooked defense contractors in exchange help bagging pricey defense contracts. That's pretty salacious too. You'd expect the press to be all over it.... why the silence on the much bigger scandal bubbling up out of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee?

As we noted last week, there's speculation that Goss may have attended poker parties organized by defense contractors implicated in the Randy "Duke" Cunningham corruption probe. One of those contractors has said that he didn't just bribe Cunningham but hired prostitutes for him as well.

The CIA has denied that Goss was a guest at the poker parties -- so far as we know, no one has asked about hookers yet -- but the timing of his resignation today is at least a little curious: TPMmuckraker reported yesterday that the Watergate Hotel, where some of the poker parties are said to have taken place, has received a number of subpoenas from federal investigators looking into the Cunningham case.

Meanwhile, keep an eye on Dusty Foggo, the man Goss installed in the No. 3 job at the CIA. As we've reported previously, the CIA's inspector general is looking into Foggo's oversight of contracts at the agency; NBC says the investigation includes allegations that Foggo steered a $2.4 million contract to Brent Wilkes, one of the contractors implicated in the Cunningham case. Wilkes and Foggo have been pals since college, and Foggo made the scene at -- and even hosted some of -- the contractors' poker parties.