Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | Two more top spies quit troubled CIA: "According to a former CIA official quoted in Newsweek magazine, he tried to lean on the agency to declassify information that he could use to 'embarrass the Democrats'.
Much of Mr Goss's career has been accidental. He is the scion of a wealthy Connecticut family and joined the CIA after Yale in 1960, when he fell into a cross-purposes conversation with a recruiter at a jobs fair.
He thought the man was a representative from his father's metal company, telling him he had just stopped by to say hello to his dad's friends. The recruiter assumed he was the son of a senior agency official.
In his job interview for the clandestine service, the jacket of the CIA director, Allen Dulles, caught fire. Assuming it must be a test, Mr Goss said nothing but stared at the smoke rising. No doubt impressed by his cool, Dulles hired him. "