boutons_
01-05-2007, 03:37 PM
Poor dubya, couldn't find anybody to take the job of head of Nat Intel, then chose the wrong fucking non-intel guy, who was mostly ineffective, and then just quit.
======================
January 5, 2007
Spy Chief’s Choice to Step Back Feeds Speculation
By MARK MAZZETTI (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/mark_mazzetti/index.html?inline=nyt-per) and DAVID E. SANGER (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/david_e_sanger/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 — From the start, John D. Negroponte (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/n/john_d_negroponte/index.html?inline=nyt-per) felt miscast as the nation’s first director of national intelligence, a diplomat who never seemed comfortable in spook’s clothing, colleagues and friends of his said.
Even at age 67, Mr. Negroponte longed to be back in the thick of policymaking, they said. But he knew it was the one role he was barred from playing as long as he remained the nation’s top intelligence chief, whose role is to step into the Oval Office each morning as a neutral, impartial adviser on the threats lurking around the globe.
It was because of this, officials said, that he agreed to do something generally unheard of in a city obsessed with the bureaucratic totem pole: trade a cabinet-level job for a subcabinet post as deputy secretary of state, a job that essentially requires him to handle tasks that Condoleezza Rice (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/condoleezza_rice/index.html?inline=nyt-per) would rather not deal with.
Mr. Negroponte leaves his office at Bolling Air Force Base after only 19 months and with mixed reviews. The base is the home of a new intelligence bureaucracy created to solve the problems laid bare after the Sept. 11 attacks, but Mr. Negroponte barely had time to get it running. All over Washington on Thursday, there were questions about whether Mr. Negroponte was there long enough to lay the foundations of real change and whether his transfer suggested that the Bush administration was less committed than it claimed to be to an intelligence overhaul that President Bush had billed as the most significant restructuring of American spy agencies in half a century.
Senior administration officials said it was Mr. Bush who personally asked Mr. Negroponte to take on the diplomatic post sometime last month. It was the second time in two years that Mr. Bush had turned to Mr. Negroponte to fill a critical job: Mr. Negroponte became the director of national intelligence only after several other candidates had turned down the job. This time around, Ms. Rice had requested over the summer that Mr. Negroponte become her deputy. But the decision languished for months as the White House sought an adequate replacement for the spy chief, and as Mr. Negroponte vacillated between remaining at the helm of an intelligence community that numbered roughly 100,000 people and a return to the State Department, in the shadow of the administration’s most visible international figure.
Senior administration officials said that Ms. Rice wanted Mr. Negroponte to focus on China and North Korea, which have been among his focuses in the intelligence post, and on Iraq, a country he knows particularly well.
Mr. Negroponte has also served as ambassador to the United Nations (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org), Mexico, the Philippines and Honduras, in a Foreign Service career that spanned more than three decades. A senior administration official who was involved in discussions about his nomination said that Ms. Rice regarded him as a foreign policy moderate who could help fill the big voids left by the departure of Robert B. Zoellick (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/z/robert_b_zoellick/index.html?inline=nyt-per), who stepped down as deputy secretary last summer, and Philip D. Zelikow, who left the job of State Department counselor last month.
Ms. Rice would continue to play a central role in Iraq policy, the official said, but she has also made it clear that she wants to devote more time to a broader diplomatic initiative aimed at Middle East peace.
Mr. Bush is expected to nominate Mike McConnell, a retired vice admiral and former chief of the National Security Agency (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_security_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org), to be Mr. Negroponte’s successor.
John E. McLaughlin, a former director of central intelligence who is a friend of Mr. Negroponte, said that he managed to make the transition from career Foreign Service officer to the intelligence arena with little difficulty, but that Mr. Negroponte was now returning to the world where he felt most at ease.
Mr. McLaughlin said he believed that Mr. Negroponte’s familiarity with the latest intelligence from Iraq would help to bring a “realistic” view of the situation there as the administration works to develop a new strategy.
But other intelligence experts expressed concern about what Mr. Negroponte’s departure might mean to the office he helped to establish. “My major concern about this appointment is not about the State Department, but what happens at the D.N.I. office,” said Lee H. Hamilton, who served as co-chairman of both the 9/11 commission and the Iraq Study Group. “The future of that office and the concept of intelligence-sharing is on the line.”
Top Congressional officials responded angrily to the news of Mr. Negroponte’s departure.
“I think he walked off the job, and I don’t like it,” said Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the new chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Just as Mr. Negroponte is leaving his post, his office is finishing a major National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s chances of surviving as a unified, independent country — a review that was commissioned only after a Congressional request over the summer, on a problem that Mr. Negroponte will have to help manage in his new post.
( ok cool! another NIE coming up. Can't wait for it to be leaked! :lol )
“He came into it after just a year in Iraq, and someone without a strong background in intelligence, and I think he is leaving awfully early, given the importance of getting this right,” said Robert Hutchings, the senior diplomat in residence at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton, who once headed the National Intelligence Council.
“I think it is quite irresponsible,” he said.
Mr. Hutchings said the departure would compound “three or four years of nonstop turmoil” within American intelligence agencies.
Bush administration officials noted several successes during Mr. Negroponte’s tenure, most significant the creation and progress of the National Counterterrorism Center. Terrorism experts have credited the center with fusing information from across the intelligence community to understand better the global terrorism threat.
But as he assembled a staff of more than 1,500 people, he was criticized for simply adding another layer to a bureaucracy he was assigned to streamline. But some intelligence experts said that the criticism was unfair, and that the real blame rested with Congress for passing convoluted legislation that made bureaucratic bloat at the director of national intelligence office inevitable. Some critics say that the job of spy czar was never necessary to begin with. Some of those whom the White House first approached to take the job nearly two years ago — including Robert M. Gates (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/robert_m_gates/index.html?inline=nyt-per), the newly installed secretary of defense — were deeply skeptical about whether that structure would work.
The White House spokesman, Tony Snow, said that President Bush was “very impressed” with the job Mr. Negroponte had done.
One of the greatest difficulties of Mr. Negroponte’s position has been trying to wrest control over multibillion dollar spy satellites and other gadgetry from the Pentagon, which historically had been in charge of 80 percent of the nation’s intelligence budget.
One of the top priorities of the former defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/donald_h_rumsfeld/index.html?inline=nyt-per), was to expand the Pentagon’s role in intelligence gathering, and some members of Congress say that Mr. Negroponte was not aggressive enough in bringing the Pentagon’s intelligence budget more under his control.
( say, Donald, just have many ways you fucked up? )
Some intelligence experts believe that Mr. Gates is likely to be less territorial than Mr. Rumsfeld was about the Pentagon’s intelligence functions, and may even be eager to cede some of the Pentagon’s authority to the new intelligence chief. Others said that the job of corralling 16 sometimes dysfunctional intelligence agencies is an often thankless task, and one where it is difficult to have a noticeable impact. Mr. Negroponte is said by associates to have grown particularly weary of clashes with members of Congress.
“I think it’s pretty telling that both Bob Gates and John Negroponte prefer jobs trying to bail us out of Iraq to the job of trying to fix U.S. intelligence,” said Amy Zegart, a professor at the University of California (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/university_of_california/index.html?inline=nyt-org) at Los Angeles and an expert in intelligence overhaul.
Jim Rutenberg contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/washington/05intel.html?hp&ex=1168059600&en=e1024c6f5a2fdab4&ei=5094&partner=homepage
======================
January 5, 2007
Spy Chief’s Choice to Step Back Feeds Speculation
By MARK MAZZETTI (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/mark_mazzetti/index.html?inline=nyt-per) and DAVID E. SANGER (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/david_e_sanger/index.html?inline=nyt-per)
WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 — From the start, John D. Negroponte (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/n/john_d_negroponte/index.html?inline=nyt-per) felt miscast as the nation’s first director of national intelligence, a diplomat who never seemed comfortable in spook’s clothing, colleagues and friends of his said.
Even at age 67, Mr. Negroponte longed to be back in the thick of policymaking, they said. But he knew it was the one role he was barred from playing as long as he remained the nation’s top intelligence chief, whose role is to step into the Oval Office each morning as a neutral, impartial adviser on the threats lurking around the globe.
It was because of this, officials said, that he agreed to do something generally unheard of in a city obsessed with the bureaucratic totem pole: trade a cabinet-level job for a subcabinet post as deputy secretary of state, a job that essentially requires him to handle tasks that Condoleezza Rice (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/condoleezza_rice/index.html?inline=nyt-per) would rather not deal with.
Mr. Negroponte leaves his office at Bolling Air Force Base after only 19 months and with mixed reviews. The base is the home of a new intelligence bureaucracy created to solve the problems laid bare after the Sept. 11 attacks, but Mr. Negroponte barely had time to get it running. All over Washington on Thursday, there were questions about whether Mr. Negroponte was there long enough to lay the foundations of real change and whether his transfer suggested that the Bush administration was less committed than it claimed to be to an intelligence overhaul that President Bush had billed as the most significant restructuring of American spy agencies in half a century.
Senior administration officials said it was Mr. Bush who personally asked Mr. Negroponte to take on the diplomatic post sometime last month. It was the second time in two years that Mr. Bush had turned to Mr. Negroponte to fill a critical job: Mr. Negroponte became the director of national intelligence only after several other candidates had turned down the job. This time around, Ms. Rice had requested over the summer that Mr. Negroponte become her deputy. But the decision languished for months as the White House sought an adequate replacement for the spy chief, and as Mr. Negroponte vacillated between remaining at the helm of an intelligence community that numbered roughly 100,000 people and a return to the State Department, in the shadow of the administration’s most visible international figure.
Senior administration officials said that Ms. Rice wanted Mr. Negroponte to focus on China and North Korea, which have been among his focuses in the intelligence post, and on Iraq, a country he knows particularly well.
Mr. Negroponte has also served as ambassador to the United Nations (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org), Mexico, the Philippines and Honduras, in a Foreign Service career that spanned more than three decades. A senior administration official who was involved in discussions about his nomination said that Ms. Rice regarded him as a foreign policy moderate who could help fill the big voids left by the departure of Robert B. Zoellick (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/z/robert_b_zoellick/index.html?inline=nyt-per), who stepped down as deputy secretary last summer, and Philip D. Zelikow, who left the job of State Department counselor last month.
Ms. Rice would continue to play a central role in Iraq policy, the official said, but she has also made it clear that she wants to devote more time to a broader diplomatic initiative aimed at Middle East peace.
Mr. Bush is expected to nominate Mike McConnell, a retired vice admiral and former chief of the National Security Agency (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/national_security_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org), to be Mr. Negroponte’s successor.
John E. McLaughlin, a former director of central intelligence who is a friend of Mr. Negroponte, said that he managed to make the transition from career Foreign Service officer to the intelligence arena with little difficulty, but that Mr. Negroponte was now returning to the world where he felt most at ease.
Mr. McLaughlin said he believed that Mr. Negroponte’s familiarity with the latest intelligence from Iraq would help to bring a “realistic” view of the situation there as the administration works to develop a new strategy.
But other intelligence experts expressed concern about what Mr. Negroponte’s departure might mean to the office he helped to establish. “My major concern about this appointment is not about the State Department, but what happens at the D.N.I. office,” said Lee H. Hamilton, who served as co-chairman of both the 9/11 commission and the Iraq Study Group. “The future of that office and the concept of intelligence-sharing is on the line.”
Top Congressional officials responded angrily to the news of Mr. Negroponte’s departure.
“I think he walked off the job, and I don’t like it,” said Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the new chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Just as Mr. Negroponte is leaving his post, his office is finishing a major National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s chances of surviving as a unified, independent country — a review that was commissioned only after a Congressional request over the summer, on a problem that Mr. Negroponte will have to help manage in his new post.
( ok cool! another NIE coming up. Can't wait for it to be leaked! :lol )
“He came into it after just a year in Iraq, and someone without a strong background in intelligence, and I think he is leaving awfully early, given the importance of getting this right,” said Robert Hutchings, the senior diplomat in residence at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton, who once headed the National Intelligence Council.
“I think it is quite irresponsible,” he said.
Mr. Hutchings said the departure would compound “three or four years of nonstop turmoil” within American intelligence agencies.
Bush administration officials noted several successes during Mr. Negroponte’s tenure, most significant the creation and progress of the National Counterterrorism Center. Terrorism experts have credited the center with fusing information from across the intelligence community to understand better the global terrorism threat.
But as he assembled a staff of more than 1,500 people, he was criticized for simply adding another layer to a bureaucracy he was assigned to streamline. But some intelligence experts said that the criticism was unfair, and that the real blame rested with Congress for passing convoluted legislation that made bureaucratic bloat at the director of national intelligence office inevitable. Some critics say that the job of spy czar was never necessary to begin with. Some of those whom the White House first approached to take the job nearly two years ago — including Robert M. Gates (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/robert_m_gates/index.html?inline=nyt-per), the newly installed secretary of defense — were deeply skeptical about whether that structure would work.
The White House spokesman, Tony Snow, said that President Bush was “very impressed” with the job Mr. Negroponte had done.
One of the greatest difficulties of Mr. Negroponte’s position has been trying to wrest control over multibillion dollar spy satellites and other gadgetry from the Pentagon, which historically had been in charge of 80 percent of the nation’s intelligence budget.
One of the top priorities of the former defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/donald_h_rumsfeld/index.html?inline=nyt-per), was to expand the Pentagon’s role in intelligence gathering, and some members of Congress say that Mr. Negroponte was not aggressive enough in bringing the Pentagon’s intelligence budget more under his control.
( say, Donald, just have many ways you fucked up? )
Some intelligence experts believe that Mr. Gates is likely to be less territorial than Mr. Rumsfeld was about the Pentagon’s intelligence functions, and may even be eager to cede some of the Pentagon’s authority to the new intelligence chief. Others said that the job of corralling 16 sometimes dysfunctional intelligence agencies is an often thankless task, and one where it is difficult to have a noticeable impact. Mr. Negroponte is said by associates to have grown particularly weary of clashes with members of Congress.
“I think it’s pretty telling that both Bob Gates and John Negroponte prefer jobs trying to bail us out of Iraq to the job of trying to fix U.S. intelligence,” said Amy Zegart, a professor at the University of California (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/university_of_california/index.html?inline=nyt-org) at Los Angeles and an expert in intelligence overhaul.
Jim Rutenberg contributed reporting.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/washington/05intel.html?hp&ex=1168059600&en=e1024c6f5a2fdab4&ei=5094&partner=homepage