|
|
|
|
|
Negroponte faces uphill battle DOYLE McMANUS and PETER SPIEGEL / Los Angeles Times | May 7 2006 WASHINGTON — After a little more than a year in his newly created job, John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, has won an initial battle to establish authority over the vast U.S. intelligence community — Porter Goss, who resisted Negroponte’s moves to limit the autonomy of the CIA, is gone. But Negroponte faces a larger and much more difficult challenge: a struggle with Donald Rumsfeld’s Defense Department, which runs more than 80 percent of the nation’s intelligence budget and is busy expanding its role. Negroponte’s job is to coordinate the work of 16 different intelligence agencies, including the CIA and the giant National Security Agency, which eavesdrops on international communications, as well as the Energy Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration. The post was created in 2005 in response to charges — made most tellingly by the 9/11 commission — that the federal government’s intelligence effort was uncoordinated and needed central direction. When he took office in April 2005, Negroponte, a veteran diplomat, moved quickly to exert his authority over the CIA. He took over the job of giving President Bush his daily intelligence briefing and took a central role in briefing Congress on intelligence issues. He transferred some CIA officers to new joint intelligence centers. And when it appeared that Goss was not fully on board, officials said, Negroponte and his deputy, Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, quietly complained to the White House — apparently contributing to Goss’ decision to resign Friday. But Negroponte has been much more cautious in confronting the Pentagon. When he has sought to push through changes, “They told him to take a flying leap,” one U.S. intelligence official said. “If you get the shove from DOD, where else can you go?” The Pentagon has said it is cooperating. But even before the intelligence director’s job was created, Rumsfeld made it clear he thought its power should be limited, and he lobbied successfully to curtail much of Negroponte’s clout over personnel and budgets. Negroponte would not speak about these issues after Goss’ resignation. But in a speech last month, he said his basic goal is to “optimize the (intelligence) community’s total performance as opposed to optimizing its members’ individual operations.” “We are in the process of remaking a loose confederation into a unified enterprise,” he added. ---------------------------------------------------
Prison Planet.tv: The Premier Multimedia Subscription Package: Download and Share the Truth! Please help our fight against the New World Order by giving a donation. As bandwidth costs increase, the only way we can stay online and expand is with your support. Please consider giving a monthly or one-off donation for whatever you can afford. You can pay securely by either credit card or Paypal. Click here to donate. |
