Associated Press

Washington, May 6: CIA Director Porter Goss has resigned, President Bush said on Friday.

Bush called Goss' tenure one of transition.

"He has led ably," Bush said from the Oval Office.

Goss, a former member of Congress, has "helped make this country a safer place," Bush said. "We've got to win the war on terror."

Said Goss: "I would like to report to you that the agency (CIA) is back on a very even keel and sailing well."

The CIA has come in for harsh criticism in recent years, not only for questionable pre-war intelligence on Iraq but also in connection with the failure of it and a host of other federal agencies to coordinate information closely in connection with the terrorist threat.

Questions about the CIA's performance in connection with Iraq involved mostly George Tenet, Goss's predecessor.

Last fall, Goss defended his agency's track record and insisted "we know more than we're able to say publicly" about terror chiefs Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The al-Qaida leaders haven't been found "primarily because they don't want us to find them and they're going to great lengths to make sure we don't find them," Goss said in a November interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."

"We're applying a lot of efforts to find out where they are." He insisted that the CIA knows "a good deal more" about the men "than we're able to say publicly."