CIA gives No. 2 job to agent who clashed with Goss

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A veteran CIA officer who
temporarily left the spy agency after clashing with former CIA
Director Porter Goss was officially named on Tuesday as the
Central Intelligence Agency’s new deputy director.

In a move expected to boost morale at a U.S. intelligence
flagship that has lost status under reforms, CIA Director Air
Force Gen. Michael Hayden announced the appointment of former
clandestine operations chief Stephen Kappes as his second in
command.

Kappes replaces Navy Vice Admiral Albert Calland, who has
been nominated by President George W. Bush as a deputy director
of the National Counterterrorism Center, the CIA said in a
statement.

A 23-year CIA veteran, Kappes temporarily left the CIA in
November 2004 after a disagreement with Goss involving the
direction of the spy agency.

CIA insiders said the clash caused a morale-damaging rift
between Goss and other senior clandestine officers that the
former CIA chief was unable to overcome before his forced
resignation last May.

Kappes, 54, briefly entered the private sector in 2005 by
joining the London security firm, ArmorGroup International.

His appointment as CIA deputy director had been widely
expected since late May, when U.S. intelligence chief John
Negroponte publicly disclosed his possible return as a step
that could help boost morale at the agency.

Fluent in Farsi and Russian, Kappes joined the CIA in 1981
and was station chief in Moscow and Kuwait after the 1991 Gulf
War. He also headed CIA counterintelligence, and in the late
1980s, served as the No. 2 officer of a CIA unit in Frankfurt
that collected information about Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s
government in Iran.