WASHINGTON, Nov 13: The US Central Intelligence Agency is in turmoil, with several senior officers threatening to leave, due to internal conflict under new director Porter Goss, a report said on Saturday.

Several senior CIA officials have clashed with Goss's chief of staff Patrick Murray, and criticized Goss for giving him too much authority over day-to-day operations, according to The Washington Post.

"It's the worst roiling I've ever heard of," one former senior official familiar with the events told the Post. "There's confusion throughout the ranks and an extraordinary loss of morale and incentive."

On Friday, the official who oversees foreign operations tendered his resignation after a confrontation with Murray, but agreed to reconsider until Monday, according to the Post.

"Several other senior clandestine service officers are threatening to leave," the Post said, citing current and former agency officials.

A wave of resignations could hurt the CIA as it struggles to combat Al Qaeda and track guerrillas in Iraq, amid Congressional moves to reorganize the agency, which has come under fire for intelligence failures in Iraq and in the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

CIA deputy director John McLaughlin announced his "purely personal decision" to retire on Friday after more than 30 years at the spy agency.

According to the Post, he also warned Goss that Murray "was treating senior officials disrespectfully and risked widespread resignations."

Murray formerly served under Goss as chief of staff on the House intelligence committee, which Goss chaired. The panel harshly criticized the CIA in a report issued in June.

Goss, a former spy turned lawmaker who led Congressional efforts to reform intelligence-gathering, took the helm of the CIA in September.

He moved swiftly to put a new leadership team in place, amid intense political pressure for an overhaul of the US intelligence establishment in response to the weaknesses exposed by the September 11 attacks and the war in Iraq.

Meanwhile, a CIA officer who criticized the US handling of the war on terror in a book published under the pseudonym "Anonymous" has also resigned, a CIA spokesman confirmed Friday.

Michael Scheuer, who led a CIA unit that tracked Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden from 1996-1999, resigned after conducting a series of unauthorized press interviews last weekend.

In a statement, Scheuer said, "My decision is entirely my own; I have been in no way forced to this decision by the CIA."

He said he had concluded "that there has not been adequate national debate over the nature of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and the forces he leads and inspires, and the nature and dimensions of intelligence reform needed to address that threat."

"It is my intention to articulate a series of views in the hope of producing a more substantive debate than what has heretofore occurred," he said.

Scheuer was the anonymous author of "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror," which was published this year with the approval of the CIA despite its damning conclusion that US actions are inflaming a global Muslim insurgency.

The agency initially allowed him to give interviews promoting the book so long as he remained anonymous, but abruptly withdrew permission in August.-AFP