February 17, 2005

Negroponte Selected As Intelligence Chief

President Bush named John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, as the government's first national intelligence director Thursday, turning to a veteran diplomat to revive a spy community besieged by criticism after the Sept. 11 attacks.
[Actually, they've been asleep at the wheel for much longer than that, going back to at least the first WTC bombing in 1993.--Jen]

Ending a nine-week search, Bush chose Negroponte, who has been in Iraq for less than a year, for the difficult job of implementing the most sweeping intelligence overhaul in 50 years.

Negroponte, 65, is tasked with bringing together 15 highly competitive spy agencies and learning to work with the combative Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the brand new CIA Director Porter Goss and other intelligence leaders. He'll oversee a covert
[If it's "covert," how does the AP know about it??--J.T.]
intelligence budget estimated at $40 billion.
[...]
Bush signaled that he sees Negroponte as the man to steer his intelligence clearinghouse. "If we're going to stop the terrorists before they strike, we must ensure that our intelligence agencies work as a single, unified enterprise," Bush said.
[...]
Bush also announced he had chosen an intelligence insider to serve as Negroponte's deputy, Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, the National Security Agency's director since 1999. As the longest-serving head of the secretive codebreaking and eavesdropping agency, Hayden pushed for change by asking some longtime personnel to retire and increasing reliance on technology contractors.

For years, blue-ribbon commissions have proposed creating a single, powerful director to oversee the entire intelligence community, but the concept didn't gain momentum until recommended by the independent Sept. 11 Commission.

Bush and other senior administration officials initially resisted, but reversed course after an exceptional lobbying effort by the families of 9/11 attack victims. Congress approved the new post in December as part of the most significant intelligence overhaul since 1947.
[...since the OSS was made over into the CIA?]

Yet intelligence veterans remain concerned about whether the job will wield enough power to lead government elements that handle everything from recruiting spies to eavesdropping to steering satellites.

Some say the authorities of the intelligence chief are too ambiguous as established in the legislation. The position was also excluded from the Cabinet to shield it from politics, requiring Negroponte to work directly with more senior personalities such as Rumsfeld.
[...]
Bush has trusted Negroponte with trying assignments. He was ambassador to the U.N. when U.S. relations with the world organization were declining over the approaching Iraq invasion.
[Isn't the U.N. pathetic?
All the U.S. was trying to do was to enforce the U.N.'s own resolutions against Saddam!]
Last year, Bush sent him to Iraq as ambassador during the middle of a bloody insurgency.

Negroponte has held official posts in eight countries, including ambassadorships in Honduras, Mexico and the Philippines. He also understands the intelligence demands of policy-makers, serving in President Reagan's National Security Council from 1987 to 1989.

Given his C.V. and from what I can tell about the man from his record over the past few years, I'd say that Negroponte is infinitely qualified to be a CEO of any major concern.
In that a lot of his career has been spent in various State Dept. positions, this will be his biggest obstacle unless and until Dr. Rice decides to clean house over there (which I look for her to do!).
This new intell chief position will either be the solution to alot of our terror problems, particularly the domestic ones, or it will be a nightmare of just one more Washington über-bureaucracy that gives a lot of folks civil service jobs without solving any of our country's problems.
Negroponte must be able to climb the Gorelick Wall and confront the intell we have, not the intell he'd wish to have as our government agencies did before 9/11 and are still doing to some extent even as we are 3 and 1/2 years into the war.
I've spent the last couple of weeks reading books about the real story behind the OKC bombing, the crash of TWA 800, the first WTC bombing and the many links between Saddam's Iraq and Al Queda (if not with the 9/11 attacks, too).
Virtually every one of these incidents in which hundreds of Americans died involved a great degree of cover-up and tone-deafness on the part of the FBI caused by the virtual refusal to recognize Islamist terrorism (often funded and even manned by Iraqis) as the source of the attacks by the Clinton Administration.
What's important is that this President has the political will to fight terror.
Now if Negroponte and Rice can get the State Dept. to put the U.S.A first and to work with a firm belief in American Exceptionalism, we might be in a position to get a jump on the bad guys, both at home and abroad!

For further reading about what really happened, you owe it to yourself as an informed citizen to read:
Laurie Mylroie's Bush vs. The Beltway: How the CIA and the State Dept. Tried to stop the War on Terror
Jayna Davis's The Third Terrorist: The Middle East Connection to the Oklahoma City Bombing
Steven Hayes's The Connection : How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America
Jack Cashill's First Strike : TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America