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Negroponte named national intelligence chief { February 18 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33210-2005Feb17.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33210-2005Feb17.html
Negroponte Named National Intelligence Chief
Ambassador to Iraq Would Oversee All 15 U.S. Spy Agencies
By Michael A. Fletcher and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, February 18, 2005; Page A01
President Bush nominated John D. Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, yesterday to be director of national intelligence, ending a long search to fill the newly created job overseeing the nation's 15 spy agencies.
Negroponte is slated to fill a post intended to prevent a repetition of the intelligence failures that preceded the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and led to overstatements regarding Saddam Hussein's weapons programs. If confirmed by the Senate, he will replace the CIA director as the nation's top intelligence official, setting budgets and priorities for national intelligence agencies and filtering the sensitive information about terrorist and other threats presented to the president.
"John will lead a unified intelligence community and will serve as the principal adviser to the president on intelligence matters," Bush said.
The nomination comes two months after Bush signed into law the broadest restructuring of the nation's intelligence services in more than half a century. Some people in the intelligence community and on Capitol Hill view the time it took to fill the post as a consequence of lingering questions over how much authority the new director would have. While the director will by law oversee the nation's foreign and domestic intelligence agencies, he will have only several hundred employees, leaving him reliant on the CIA, FBI and Pentagon agencies to collect and analyze intelligence and carry out covert operations.
Negroponte also would oversee the new National Counterterrorism Center, which will be central to the war on terrorism, though its director, also a presidential appointee, will report directly to Bush on counterterrorist operations.
In comments to reporters, Bush made it clear that he would look to Negroponte as his top intelligence official, not just in title but also in fact. "When the intelligence briefings start in the morning, John will be there," Bush said. "And John and I will work to determine how much exposure the CIA will have in the Oval Office. I would hope more rather than less."
Negroponte said he was "honored" to be selected. Standing next to Bush, he said, "Providing timely and objective national intelligence to you, the Congress, the departments and agencies, and to our uniformed military services is a critical national task. . . . Equally important will be the reform of the intelligence community in ways designed to best meet the intelligence needs of the 21st century."
Creating the post was a key recommendation of the national commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The law resulting from the commission's work, as modified by Congress, reorganizes the nation's intelligence-collecting and analytic agencies in a way that proponents hope will lead to better coordination and communication among them.
Bush, who initially resisted some of the recommendations, said yesterday that the new structure will make the nation safer. "If we're going to stop the terrorists before they strike, we must ensure that our intelligence agencies work as a single, unified enterprise," he said. "And that's why I supported and Congress passed reform legislation creating the job."
Yesterday, Bush also named Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, head of the National Security Agency, which collects electronic intelligence, to be Negroponte's deputy. Hayden, who has run the NSA for almost six years, was a White House choice for the deputy post even before Negroponte was picked.
In selecting Negroponte, 65, Bush is turning to someone with 40 years' experience as a diplomat abroad and a senior official in Washington. Among the jobs he has held are U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and ambassador to the Philippines, Mexico and Honduras.
"He understands the power centers in Washington," Bush said, adding that he also has another key qualification. "His service in Iraq during these past few historic months has given him something that will prove an incalculable advantage for an intelligence chief: an unvarnished and up-close look at a deadly enemy."
The choice of Negroponte drew bipartisan praise from the top members of the Senate and House intelligence committees. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate panel, said he was "extremely pleased." Roberts and his counterpart on the House side, Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), noted in separate statements that Negroponte and Hayden have significant national security and intelligence backgrounds.
Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), ranking Democrat on the House intelligence panel, has known Negroponte for years and spoke to him yesterday after his appointment. "I told him he had traded the Green Zone for the hot zone," she said.
It could be well into March before Negroponte's confirmation hearings take place, since he must first return to Baghdad to wrap up his duties there. His confirmation hearing may revisit his service as ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s, when the Honduran military's Battalion 3-16, which had received CIA training, took part in the torture and killing of citizens accused of being rebels. Reports filed by Negroponte's embassy at the time did not note the human rights violations.
Negroponte's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in 2001 was delayed for months because human rights groups protested his role in Honduras. At the hearings, he testified that he did not think the death squads operated in that country. He has said he served "honorably and conscientiously in a manner fully consistent with and faithful to applicable laws and policies."
In the new post, Negroponte would not only oversee the nation's combined intelligence budget of $40 billion a year but would also set intelligence collection and analytic priorities, ensure sharing of information among agencies, and establish standards for all intelligence personnel. He is "moving in uncharted waters, and he has a lot of turf that he has to defend or reconstruct," said Judith Yaphe, a former senior CIA analyst who is now with the National Defense University.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters yesterday that he thinks Negroponte has done "an absolutely first-class job in Iraq" and that the ambassador is "clearly an excellent choice" to be intelligence chief.
Rumsfeld has testified at congressional hearings that he is concerned about the power an umbrella intelligence director might wield over the Defense Department and budgetary matters, but he said those concerns could be worked out.
He said discussions are ongoing about the relationship between the CIA and Pentagon officials about their respective roles in paramilitary operations.
Retired ambassador Frank G. Wisner, a close friend of Negroponte's, said the challenge in taking the job is that "he will set the standard for those to come."
Negroponte's name did not arise in the early speculation that swirled around the new intelligence post, which had mentioned former CIA director Robert M. Gates, current CIA Director Porter J. Goss and retired Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks as candidates. But in the past few weeks, after some candidates were hesitant about the job, the White House focused on Negroponte after it became clear that he wanted to leave his Baghdad post.
He was contacted by White House Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr., who began a series of conversations. Those resulted in a meeting with Card on Saturday, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. On Monday, Negroponte met with Bush and others to discuss progress in Iraq. Afterward, he was invited to the Oval Office with Bush and Card, where he was offered the job.
Staff writers Robin Wright and Josh White contributed to this report.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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