Embattled CIA Director James Woolsey called it quits Wednesday, leaving a shadowy future for the nation's post-Cold War spy machine.
Woolsey's resignation had less to do with any Clinton administration pressure than with family considerations, officials said.
President Clinton, in a statement, accepted the Monday letter of resignation with regret and praised Woolsey for "advancing the transformation of U.S. intelligence in the aftermath of the Cold War."
Mentioned as a strong possibility to succeed Woolsey is Deputy Defense Secretary John Deutch, the Pentagon's No. 2 official. "It is an opportunity for the president to put somebody in who is prepared to really make some changes," says Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz., who tangled with Woolsey over the handling of the Aldrich Ames spy scandal.
"Most members of Congress will receive . . . Woolsey's resignation with relief," adds Rep. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., an Intelligence Committee member.
On the heels of the Ames spy scandal and questions over the role of U.S. intelligence after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the director's job is guaranteed to be daunting.
"There are a tremendous number of . . . problems that the agency will have regardless of who the director is," says Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., incoming chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Whoever becomes director also will have a host of people looking over his shoulder.
Not only are the House and Senate intelligence committees planning hearings into the agency's future, but a congressionally mandated blue-ribbon commission will soon examine everything from radically changing spy priorities to eliminating the agency altogether.
"Turmoil at the top of the agency is not what they need right now," says former CIA director Stansfield Turner.
Woolsey, confirmed as CIA director in February 1993, will be remembered for putting the agency on a sound post-Cold War footing, says former CIA director William Webster.
"He did a lot of strategic planning that will pay much dividends," Webster says. "He made the concrete steps - put those building blocks in place for a first-rate intelligence service in a new world."
Woolsey also came under intense public and congressional fire in September after he decided that no CIA official would be demoted or fired in the wake of the Ames case, although 10 U.S. intelligence sources were killed because of information turned over to the Soviets by the CIA turncoat.
Woolsey issued reprimands to 11 current and former agency officials, raising questions about whether he had been co-opted by the agency's "old-boy" network.
Woolsey, expected to stay on until Saturday and then return to work as a lawyer, had been rumored since September to be unhappy and planning to leave.
But Specter says he spoke with Woolsey last week and got no hint of an impending exit.
"He sounded to me like he was deeply engaged with his job," Specter says.
What apparently persuaded Woolsey to leave was a family discussion during the holiday, those close to him say. They say his concerns included long hours away from home and college costs of his three sons.
"In making the decision to return to the private sector . . . my family figures prominently," Woolsey's statement said.
But lack of strong visible support from Clinton, as well a sometimes chilly relationship with National Security Council officials, also played a role.
"I don't think Woolsey was pushed (by the Clinton administration) but I don't think he got any vote of confidence," says former CIA official Vincent Cannistraro. "And finally he said the hell with it."
