Time Magazine summarized it: “The departure was the culmination of a turf war between Goss and Negroponte.”

But also noted:

President George W. Bush stunned Washington on Friday by accepting the resignation of CIA Director Porter J. Goss, and Republican sources told TIME that the White House plans to name his replacement on Monday: Air Force General Michael V. Hayden, who as Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence has been a visible and aggressive defender of the administration’s controversial eavesdropping program. His nomination is sure to reignite the battle over the program on Capitol Hill, where one House Democrat promises “a partisan food fight” during the confirmation process.

Though Hayden, who has a close rapport with Vice President Cheney, has not been formally offered the job, he is the leading candidate and the announcement is planned for Monday at the White House, the sources said. The President frequently extends a formal offer immediately before an announcement, to cut down on leaks and allow for last-minute developments.

White House officials had hoped to announce Goss’s departure and Hayden’s nomination at the same time but Goss, who resigned under pressure, balked at that kind of choreography. “He said, ‘If we’re going to do this, let’s go ahead and do it,'’ a senior administration official said.

So once again, it boils down to an attempt to bring total control of our government’s military and intelligence to the leading Cromagno-con, Emperor DickUs Cheney.

Over at TPM Cafe, retired spook and terror expert Larry Johnson contacted insiders who believe Goss and even Foggo aren’t guilty of direct involvement in the Lobbya Lube scandal but had simply become political liabilities whose cervixes were no longer needed.

And before the appointment of Goss’ replacement was floated, even the speculumating Special Ed was astute enough to see Hayden as a liability:

Hayden has credibility with members of both parties and the press. He knows the civilian and military intelligence communities better than any of the others on the short list and could hit the ground running for Bush at Langley.

If he’s such a slam dunk, then why not just stop here? For one good reason: Hayden created and ran the NSA surveillance program that intercepts international communications without FISA warrants. Putting Hayden in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee for a confirmation hearing would be akin to waving a red flag in front of a bull. Democrats would jump at the chance to rip Hayden alive during nationally-televised hearings in a way that would make the Alito hearings look like a prayer breakfast. The worst-kept secret for the Democrats heading into this election is that they want to capture control of Congress in order to press impeachment proceedings against Bush. A Hayden confirmation hearing will become a fishing expedition for any tidbits they can discover for their later efforts.

Since the official announcement is set for Monday, I suppose Bush may realize the pending problem and change his choice… uh-huh, yeah, that’s a leap of faith this old fool will never make.

Till evidence emerges otherwise, I’m betting Goss was asked to resign so the Cheney-Negroponte Imperial Command will have unchallenged control of the military-industrial simplex.

Billmon posits it as a political play, for starters:

Then again, maybe we really have reached the point where all decisions, even those dealing with the most important organs of state security, are made with an eye on the upcoming congressional elections. As George Packer writes in this week’s New Yorker, there isn’t any such thing as bipartisanship in U.S. foreign policy anymore, which unfortunately doesn’t mean such subjects are now exposed to full and open democratic debate (that’ll be the day) but does mean the Cheney administration feels perfectly free to treat the CIA the way Tom DeLay used to treat the Department of Homeland Security — as its private political fiefdom. And it was by that standard that Goss wasn’t getting the job done. He wasn’t canned for gutting the nation’s most important intelligence agency — that was the job he was sent there to do — he was fired because he’d become a political liability, and was threatening to become a much, much bigger one.

But after taking a legitimate swipe at Dems - including those many consider to be reliable progressives - for handing the reins to Goss in the first place, Billmon gets down to the most likely reality:

As an old lefty who’s seen a little of the CIA’s handiwork in Central America, I probably should be happy the Cheneyites and their Democratic enablers have managed to fuck the agency beyond all recognition. But I have a sinking feeling that’s not going to curb the regime from doing the nasty (most death squad program-related activities having been transferred to Rumsfeld’s Special Forces X-Men.) But it’s already crippled the parts of the CIA that do things that actually serve the national interest (and my own personal interests) like trying to stop, or at least monitor, the spread of WMD. Awhile ago I heard Keith Obermann on MSNBC asking some ex-CIA agent if Goss had managed to turn the agency into the new FEMA (or words to that effect.) The guy basically ducked the question, but the expression on his face as he did so was quite eloquent.

Heckuva job, Porter. Heckuva job.

However, just because the Night Porter is carrying his own bags out the door, that doesn’t mean the White House’s war on the agency is over. The leak investigations and political purges no doubt will continue, if more discreetly. The people who have been purged — taking with them something like 300 years worth of cumulative experience — aren’t coming back. The CIA isn’t the new FEMA; it’s the new New Orleans, flooded and gutted and left to mold in the mud.

I’d say it would take years for the agency to recover, but my suspicion is that it will never recover, as its missions and resources continue to flow towards the Pentagon, like stars being sucked down a black hole. Rather than being a hatchet man, like Schlesinger, or a caretaker, like Carter’s CIA director, Stansfield Turner, Goss’s successor may be more in the nature of an undertaker, charged with the continued, gradual dismantling of the agency — taking the C out of CIA.

And that may be the bigger story here. What’s been happening over the past decade — or longer, according to Andrew Bacevich — has been a relentless expansion in the authority and functions of the military services, and of their civilian overlords in the Secretary of Defense’s office, at the expense of the CIA, the State Department, the NSC and the other bits of alphabet in the national security soup. Years ago I saw an editorial cartoon that showed the Pentagon attached to the White House as its new west wing. We may be nearing the day when it’s actually the other way around. And Porter Goss has done his part to bring that day closer.

As he notes, such consolidation poses the inevitable question of whether those who seek to control the abyss will end up being the controlled. The sole difference between Billmon’s hypothesis and mine is that I believe it’s already happened.

After all, it’s not Cheney’s job to be in charge. This just makes that reality as transparent as it’s ever been that Bush isn’t the decider at all. He’s just the amiable front man of a machine that’s completely slipped beyond his grasp.

And there’s plenty of historical precedence for what we’re seeing. The Gestapo, the KGB and Savak come to mind. Sure, the intel ops haven’t quite reached the deadliness of those predescessors. But without an unrelenting effort by Congress to regain oversight and control, all the working components are in place.

With a rubberstamp Legislature and Judiciary, and Cheney running the show for his weaker ‘cousin’, the parallels with a recently toppled Middle East dictator are positively eerie.

Required reading: Hayden’s Fourth.

Hayden verbatim.