The United States' intelligence apparatus has been scourged by the espionage scandal involving Aldrich Ames and humiliated by allegations of sexual harassment and male clubbishness.
It also faces the hard political reality of a shrinking budget and a new Republican Congress eager to plant its own imprint on the intelligence community.
Woolsey was the first CIA director from the outside to take the helm with the stated intent of moving the agency through the changes needed in a post-Cold War era. It is a job he will leave unfinished.
"These are tough changes ahead," Woolsey said in an interview last month, describing the tough predicament of trying to boost the effectiveness and morale of an organization that has come sharply under fire.
That is not easy these days. On Capitol Hill, the Senate and House intelligence committees soon will be chaired by Republicans who have their own ideas on making the CIA more accountable to the public trust.
For example, Pennsylvanian Arlen Specter, who will head the Senate intelligence panel, says he is intent on learning whether the Ames spy scandal and the allegations of sexual harassment are an aberration or part of deep structural failings.
The Clinton administration too has designs on reshaping the intelligence apparatus, and a special presidential commission has been established to do so under former defense secretary Les Aspin.
Former CIA directors have also weighed in. Robert Gates, for instance, has outlined a 10-point plan that ranges from creating a separate director of military intelligence to halting duplication by various government agencies in compiling intelligence data.
This is not to say that Woolsey has been inactive. In just the 10 weeks between Aldrich Ames' arrest and his sentence to life in prison,Woolsey and his subordinates held a total of 242 meetings with members of Congress and their staffs, and CIA experts advised the White House on such issues as North Korea, Russia, Iraq and international organized crime.
As part of an array of steps he hoped would increase effectiveness at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, Woolsey also implemented new procedures for coordinating CIA and FBI operations and overhauled the agency's new-employee training program.
But even as Woolsey was remodeling his organization, many of his detractors said he was not acting fast enough.
One constant critic, Senator Dennis DeConcini, the Arizona Democrat who is the outgoing chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, attacked everything from the size of the budgets Woolsey sought to his handling of the Ames case.
Others in Congress were upset that Woolsey's harshest punishments in the Ames matter were reprimands for some of Ames' supervisors.
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