Goss departure "mutual understanding" with Bush

WASHINGTON, May 5 (Reuters) CIA director Porter Goss' resignation today was based on a ''mutual understanding'' between President George W Bush, national intelligence director John Negroponte and Goss, a senior Bush administration official said.

''The best way to describe it is when you ask somebody to do very difficult things during a period of transition, it often makes sense to hand off the reins to somebody else to take the agency forward,'' the official said.

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