Rep. Peter Hoekstra has lashed out at the Central Intelligence Agency for rehiring and promoting a controversial former operations officer to head the National Clandestine Service.
NewsMax’s Kenneth R. Timmerman broke the story on Monday that CIA Director Michael Hayden was bringing back Michael J. Sulick, three years after he left the Agency to protest reforms being put in place by then-CIA Director Porter Goss.
Sulick was associate deputy director for operations when he resigned in November 2004 along with his boss, Stephen R. Kappes.
“I think it’s very disappointing,” Rep. Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican who is the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, told the Washington Examiner.
“It’s a decision made by Gen. Hayden that is clearly a poke in the eye of his predecessor, Porter Goss, but more importantly it’s a stick in the eye of the president.
“Sulick did undercut Porter and Porter’s agenda and thereby undercut the president’s agenda. For his behavior, he gets welcomed back into the CIA and gets welcomed back with a promotion.”
When Goss took over the Agency in September 2004, he sought to revitalize the clandestine service and weed out “dead wood” operators who were the product of an “old boys network” that failed to recruit spies in difficult overseas environments.
But according to Timmerman, he ran into fierce opposition from Sulick, Kappes, and other products of the CIA “old guard,” who objected to Goss’s efforts to reform the operations directorate and bring it under his control.
“It’s clear under Gen. Hayden that reform will not take place,” Hoekstra complained. “He’s made his decision that he will buy in with the group of people at the CIA who believed there were no problems at the CIA.”
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.