Posted by
on Thursday, January 04, 2007 12:48:19 PM
News from the LA Times is that John Negroponte is stepping down as the National Intelligence Director, and taking the number two spot at State:John D. Negroponte, who in 2005 became the first director of national intelligence, overseeing the 16 U.S. spy agencies, will give up that job to become deputy secretary of State, U.S. officials said Wednesday evening.
A veteran diplomat, Negroponte, 67, joined the new agency at a time of growing concern over the failures of U.S. intelligence to anticipate the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and to accurately assess Iraq's illicit weapons programs before the 2003 U.S. invasion. By moving to the No. 2 diplomatic post, vacant since July, he would be returning to more familiar terrain.
A replacement for Negroponte has not been selected, a U.S. official said. But there was speculation that the post could go to J. Michael McConnell, a retired vice admiral who headed the National Security Agency from 1992 to 1996. Attempts to reach McConnell, now a senior vice president at the McLean, Va., consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, were unsuccessful.
Negroponte's office declined to comment on why the director would cut short his service, which includes giving President Bush his daily intelligence briefing, for what is considered a lower-ranking position. But people close to Negroponte, who spent 37 years as a Foreign Service officer, said they believed he was not happy trying to better integrate sometimes-rivalrous organizations in a specialty outside his own.
I know nopthing about John Michael McConnell aside from the fact that he was a former National Security director from '92-'96, as the LA Times story points out. What I do know is that this could be a blessing in disguise.
Negroponte, we'll recall, was adamant about not releasing the Iraqi documents seized by US forces during and after the 2003 invasion. It took pressure from Curt Weldon and James Sensenbrenner, and a number of noted pundits, including The Weekly Standar's Stephen Hayes, to get them released. And up until late 2006, those records were available online, and were being translated by amateur pundits, like Omar and Mohammed at Iraq The Model. However, thanks to a story by the NY Times, that archive was shut down.
Negroponte was a pain in the backside when he assumed the DNI position--a cabinet-level position endorsed by the 9/11 Commission--because he was constantly butting heads with our intelligence agencies. From the CIA to the FBI; the NSA to the DIA, Negroponte wasn't making friends and influencing people. His hard-headed approach, while commendable, just didn't streamline the intel-sharing process. Bitter rivalries between the agencies didn't help his cause, either.
Negroponte's talents will be welcome in the senior ranks of the State Department, which has been stressed by simultaneous crises in the Middle East and elsewhere and has lost several top officials in recent months. Some foreign diplomats have complained that it has became increasingly difficult to win top-level attention on even urgent issues, except for critical items related to the Middle East.
The previous deputy secretary, Robert B. Zoellick, focused mostly on the issues of China, East Asia and trade. Negroponte, who earlier served as the first U.S. ambassador to Iraq, would come to the State Department as the Bush administration formulates a new strategy for U.S. involvement there.
Traditionally, the deputy functions as a kind of chief operating officer for the State Department, in charge of budgets and policy planning. But in practice, the assignments of those in that post have varied widely, depending on the wishes of the secretary and the deputy's own talents.One State Department official said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other officials would "obviously love to have" Negroponte, who "has had about every kind of big job there is. His resume is pretty hard to top."
The official noted that Negroponte had been ambassador to Mexico, the Philippines and Honduras as well as Iraq. He was U.S. ambassador to the United Nations before the Iraq invasion and was a deputy national security advisor during the Reagan administration, serving under then-national security advisor Colin L. Powell.
This is the only fear I have about the change. Negroponte has played the diplomat game before, and to say that State is on the same page as the president is a foolish assumption. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was supposed to go in and clean up the mess left from previous administrations, and from Colin Powell. State, under previous administrations, seemingly missed the point of their job. That is, you don't side with foreign nations; you fight in favor of the US.
I can only wish Negroponte the best in his new job. But we'd better hope that if McConnell is the guy chosen to take his place as DNI, he's better than Negroponte was. I wasn't impressed with his tenure there, nor his inability to get all 16 intelligence agencies to work together cohesively. The petty partisan bickering has got to end between our intelligence services if this nation is to be protected efficiently.
Publius II