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CIA keeps silent on moving plans

Paper says office to relocate to Denver

Rocky Mountain News

Published May 7, 2005 at midnight

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WASHINGTON - If the CIA plans to move some of its operations to Colorado, it hasn't let state lawmakers in on the secret.

State congressional offices were still in the dark on Friday, after The Washington Post reported that the intelligence agency plans to relocate the headquarters of its National Resources Division to Denver.

Citing unnamed government sources, the newspaper reported that the CIA had tentatively budgeted $20 million to move an undetermined number of employees from the agency's headquarters in Langley, Va., to Denver.

Agency officials declined to comment Friday, and it was unclear whether the story represented a preliminary trial balloon or a concept further along in planning.

"We would certainly welcome the move of the domestic intelligence division or any other part of the CIA to Denver if it fell into the interests of national security," said Josh Freed, a spokesman for Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Denver.

"I think it is in such early stages of consideration that numerous angles need to be looked at and considered before it can be determined how serious this is."

Such a move could affect DeGette's district, but neither she nor Colorado's two U.S. Senate offices had been briefed as of Friday.

Transferring the sensitive CIA operations would require extensive consultation with the Senate and House of Representatives' intelligence committees, which do not have any Colorado members. Committee representatives declined comment Friday.

Part of the National Resources Division's mission is to recruit foreign citizens in the United States to work with the CIA and provide intelligence once they return home. It also tries to glean information from Americans returning from overseas trips.

Sources told The Washington Post that the move is consistent with new CIA Director Porter Goss' hopes of ending "group-think" by limiting growth at the CIA's sprawling Virginia headquarters. Other officials reportedly questioned whether Colorado-based agents could get "disconnected." The state already has a prominent military presence, with a busy Army base at Fort Carson, Air Force bases and missile defense facilities in and around Colorado Springs, and sensitive facilities at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora that download data from intelligence-gathering satellites.