WASHINGTON — In the wake of high-level departures in the CIA's clandestine service, intelligence officials are bracing for an even more aggressive overhaul of the agency's analytic ranks by Director Porter J. Goss.
Current and former intelligence officials said Goss planned to replace the head of the CIA's analytic branch, Jami A. Miscik, with a veteran analyst who already runs one of the agency's major offices.
Miscik heads the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence, the division that drew much of the blame for erroneous assessments of weapons programs in prewar Iraq.
Goss also is said to be planning to replace other senior officers in the analytic branch and to push through changes designed to encourage analysts to be more aggressive in their assessments of developments on terrorism, weapons proliferation and other priority topics.
Although Goss has focused much of his attention during his first two months as director on the CIA's spying cadre, an agency official close to Goss and his leadership team said: "They had the D.I. in their sights [when they arrived] and still do."
The Directorate of Intelligence is the branch of the CIA responsible for analyzing trends and producing reports delivered to the president and other senior policymakers.
"They haven't gotten to the D.I. yet, but when they do, there will be more people screaming bloody murder," the official said, referring to the outcry this week in Washington over the resignations of the two top officials in the CIA's clandestine service. "There's going to be a new deputy director for intelligence, and there's going to be many senior-level positions that are going to be reassigned."
Goss alluded to a series of pending moves in an internal memo Monday, telling employees via e-mail: "In the days and weeks ahead of us, I will announce a series of changes -- some involving procedures, organization, senior personnel and areas of focus for our action."
Miscik has not indicated that she intends to resign, current and former intelligence officials said. But after making an effort to keep her job under Goss, she is widely expected to leave.
"Jami was trying to hang on by her fingernails and it wasn't working," said a former high-ranking official in the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence who has worked with Miscik.
A CIA spokesman declined to comment.
