WASHINGTON – The top two officials in the CIA’s clandestine service have resigned amid turmoil among the leadership at the nation’s spy service, according to intelligence officials.

The CIA’s Deputy Director for Operations Stephen Kappes and his immediate deputy, Michael Sulick, said they are leaving the agency, according to officials who spoke yesterday on condition of anonymity because the resignations had not yet been announced.

Both men were part of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, or clandestine service, which is responsible for covert operations around the globe.

A CIA spokesperson declined to comment immediately.

Messrs. Kappes and Sulick have been involved in heated debates – some have described them as feuds – with senior aides to new CIA Director Porter Goss, a former Republican congressman from Florida, who brought them in from the House Intelligence Committee he led for nearly eight years, ending in August.

Mr. Goss was sworn in to replace CIA Director George Tenet in September.

Current agency officials are not allowed to talk with the media without permission. Former agency officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, have described turmoil within some quarters of the agency as Mr. Goss gets settled.

Mr. Kappes tendered his resignation last week after a heated meeting with Mr. Goss’s senior aides, but was asked to reconsider. Associates say he began clearing out his office over the weekend.

Just what is going on inside the CIA is a matter of perspective.

To some, Mr. Goss was brought in to make much-needed changes to the agency that has come under fire for shortfalls leading up to the September 11 attacks and the flawed prewar intelligence on Iraq. They say he’s making personnel changes, as any incoming director would.

To others, Mr. Goss’s aides are employing a brusque management style that is alienating career officials with decades of experience.

Mr. Kappes, for instance, has been with the agency for 23 years and has extensive experience in the Middle East. A former senior intelligence official credited Mr. Kappes with being “principally responsible” for the operation that resulted in the Libya’s leader, Muammar Gadhafi, turning over his weapons of mass destruction to America.

Mr. Sulick headed the agency’s counterintelligence division before becoming Mr. Kappes’s deputy.

Both rose to their positions this summer.

A front-runner for Mr. Kappes’s job heading the clandestine service is the current director of the CIA’s counterterrorist center, who cannot be publicly identified because he is undercover, said an intelligence official, also speaking on condition of anonymity.