CIA's Directorate for Operations during the controversial Iraq WMD reporting. He served in that position until he resigned in November 2004. John E. McLaughlin, the then-Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, announced his departure the same week Kappes quit, thus exacerbating the rumored management problems for Goss. Dramatic departure in 2004 It had been widely reported in the press that Kappes quit rather than carry out a request by Goss to reassign Michael Sulick, his then deputy. It is also reported that this incident occurred because Goss's chief of staff admonished the then assistant Deputy Director for Counterintelligence, Mary Margaret Graham – who later worked for the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Negroponte – about leaking personnel information. According to some news reports, Sulick had engaged in a shouting match with Goss's chief of staff. For a brief period in between his appointments at the CIA, Kappes worked in the private security industry. In April 2005, ArmorGroup, a British security firm, named him vice president in charge of global strategy and named him Chief Operating Officer (COO) in November 2005. Second CIA tour (2006–2010) Kappes was named as the next DDCIA by Negroponte in May 2006. Kappes was believed to be the preferred choice for Director of the CIA in the incoming Obama administration by Senators Jay Rockefeller, the outgoing chairman, and Dianne Feinstein, the incoming chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Instead, Leon Panetta was appointed to the position in February 2009, and Kappes was retained as DDCIA, the latter a condition set by Feinstein in exchange for her support for the former. Convicted of kidnapping, extraordinary rendition and torture On November 4, 2009, in a landmark ruling, Italian judge Oscar Magi convicted 22 American CIA operatives of kidnapping Muslim cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, known as Abu Omar, from the streets of Milan in 2003. Most of the top CIA officers had left the agency, with the exception of Kappes, who at the time was the assistant director of the CIA's clandestine branch. Role in hiding detainee death Per official reports, Kappes was responsible for the alteration of records regarding the death of a detainee at the 'Salt Pit', a secret CIA interrogation operation in Afghanistan. A detainee froze to death, after having been showered with water and left outside overnight. Kappes made certain that the death was retained 'off the books'. According to two former officials who