Porter J. Goss and a band of brothers, secret agents in cold-war Europe, settled here in retirement three decades ago and used the political skills they had learned in the Central Intelligence Agency to create and run a new community.
They established a profitable newspaper from scratch. They set up a local government to protect pristine beaches from commercial development. And they nursed the political career of Mr. Goss, the Republican Florida congressman named this week by President Bush to be director of central intelligence.
In interviews in the last two days, old friends of Mr. Goss recalled his years as a spy and a budding politician, who rose from City Council to county commission to Congress. In the late 1960's, they said, Mr. Goss was in London as a clandestine services officer for the C.I.A., recruiting and supervising spies and foreign agents, much as he had done earlier in Mexico and the Dominican Republic.
Donald F. Whitehead, a onetime professor of political science and international relations, was working for the C.I.A. in Paris at the time, said his widow, Grace E. Whitehead. And Fred Valtin was working for the agency in Germany.
His widow, Jane C. Valtin, said: ''Fred helped the Germans establish a postwar government under the auspices of the C.I.A. He hung around with Willy Brandt and helped build the Social Democratic Party.''
The three men ended up on Sanibel Island, a short drive from Fort Myers in southwest Florida. The Whiteheads arrived first, in 1969. They helped Mr. Goss recuperate on the island when his intelligence career was cut short by a nearly fatal infection in 1971. Mr. Valtin arrived a little later.
Mrs. Whitehead said the men had become friends in Europe and founded the weekly newspaper, The Island Reporter, in 1973. They supported stringent land use planning and the incorporation of Sanibel as a way for the city to control its destiny and prevent developers from spoiling its lush tropical vegetation and beaches.
The retired spies -- three spooks on an island, in the words of a friend -- ''used all their skills to manage this place,'' said Mrs. Whitehead, 86, who still lives in the area.
Developers were none too happy. They complained that ''the C.I.A. was coming down here, was buying up property and would take over the island,'' Mrs. Whitehead recalled.
The owners of the newspaper were adept at gathering political intelligence. ''Porter went to meetings of the Lee County commissioners and brought back information,'' Mrs. Whitehead said. ''My husband, who was editor of the paper, wrote it up.''
Mr. Whitehead, a former intelligence case officer, recruited Mr. Valtin to be business manager of the paper. From his years at the agency, Mr. Valtin ''knew how to take care of money,'' Mrs. Whitehead said.
Mrs. Valtin said her husband was ''budget director of the C.I.A.,'' at its headquarters in Northern Virginia, when he retired in 1973.
Mr. Valtin was born in Germany, but he and two brothers came to the United States in 1938 and served in the United States Army in World War II. Their father, a dentist, served in the German Army. Their mother, a Quaker, worked in this country at the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.
Mark R. Twombly, who went to work for the newspaper in 1974, fresh out of college, said: ''This was a worldly group of people with a secretive background. They were expert at not saying anything about their C.I.A. past. That added to the intrigue and character of the place.''
In a preview issue of The Island Reporter, the owners said: ''We don't want to be too sophisticated, but neither do we want to be sloppy. We'll not be crusaders, predicting gloom as the byproduct of all growth. But we'll not be silent if we think that the overall interests of the community are being needlessly jeopardized by an individual or group.''
Mrs. Valtin said: ''The Island Reporter started in our house. Gracie addressed envelopes in our garage and it was showing a profit in six months.''
After Sanibel was incorporated in 1974, Mr. Goss was elected to the City Council and became the first mayor. He served on the Lee County Commission from 1983 to 1988, when he was elected to Congress.
Mr. Goss, 65, has been a member of the United States House of Representatives since 1989. One of his four children, R. Mason Goss, 36, said the Whiteheads and the Valtins seemed like part of his family as he was growing up in Sanibel, which felt then like an idyllic ''little fishing village.''
Mason Goss said his knowledge of his father's career was sketchy, based mostly on surmise and speculation.
Porter Goss did serve ''on Hispaniola,'' in the Dominican Republic, perhaps gathering intelligence on Cuba, the son said. And his father ''spent some time in Miami'' working for the agency. ''The Cuban missile crisis was coming up right around then,'' said the son, who now teaches history and politics as headmaster of a private school here.
''I had no idea my father was even in the C.I.A. until I was 10 or 11 years old,'' in 1978 or 1979, Mason Goss said.
Mr. Whitehead and Mr. Valtin had retired after long careers in the agency. By contrast, Porter Goss retired after 10 years, when he was just 34.
''I wondered why,'' Mason Goss said. ''My mother just said he was ill, and that's why we got to come down here to Florida. That's what we were told.''
Some people have speculated that Mr. Goss's mysterious illness might have resulted from foul play in the spy wars. But Mrs. Whitehead, a nurse, and Mason Goss said they had never heard that. ''We sort of understood that we didn't need to ask more questions about that,'' the younger Mr. Goss said.
Mrs. Whitehead said Porter Goss ''had a terrible infection, spent four months in a hospital, received vast doses of antibiotics and had blood clots in his chest and his legs.'' A doctor told him he had to ''do nothing but sit in the sun,'' she added.
The ex-spies joined together in another business venture that was less successful than the newspaper. They operated Island Boat Rental, in the Sanibel marina. Mrs. Whitehead said the main purpose of the business was ''to give Porter something to do out in the sunshine.''
Mr. Twombly said: ''From a business point of view, it was a disaster. I don't think it ever made money.''