WASHINGTON -President Bush's nominee to be the nation's first intelligence director promised fundamental changes at the 15 agencies he will oversee and said he would give policy-makers the unvarnished truth about threats.
Our intelligence effort has to generate better results. That's my mandate
plain and simple John Negroponte, a veteran diplomat and former Iraq ambassador, told the Senate Intelligence Committee at his confirmation hearing yesterday.
Democrats, still chafed by the botched intelligence on Iraq, said they were skeptical he could be the independent arbiter of intelligence the nation needs and questioned whether he adequately reported human rights abuses as ambassador to Honduras two decades ago.
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said Negroponte's 1980s-era declassified communications suggest he was an ambassador to a different country and saw things through an administration-colored lens.
Yet Negroponte, backed firmly by the committee's Republicans, repeatedly tried to assure senators of his objectivity.
My punch line is I believe in calling things the way I see them
and I believe that the president deserves from his director of national intelligence and from the intelligence community unvarnished truth
he said.
Negroponte's confirmation is expected to win easy approval by the intelligence panel and the full Senate.
That would make him the first national intelligence director, charged with overseeing the government's 15 highly competitive spy agencies. The job that Congress created last year represents the most sweeping change to the intelligence community's leadership since 1947.
Negroponte will take over a spy community that has become known for the bureaucratic infighting detailed by a number of recent blue-ribbon commissions that examined the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the intelligence errors in the run-up to the Iraq invasion. Dozens of reforms have been proposed.
However, Negroponte frustrated some Democrats by declining to provide an outline of changes he'll make, saying he is still studying the commissions' findings.
Instead, Negroponte for the first time laid out his broad vision for U.S. intelligence. He acknowledged that he must bring together fiefdoms at the Pentagon, CIA, Justice Department and Homeland Security Department and said part of his job will be to ensure officials are not risk-averse against an eclectic array of enemies.
We need a single intelligence community that cooperates seamlessly
that moves quickly and that spends more time thinking about the future than the past
said Negroponte, who called this his toughest assignment in a 40-year government career.
Senate Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said he wants Negroponte to provide leadership and a kick in the pants when necessary to intelligence agencies. But significant doubts have been raised about whether Negroponte will have enough authority under the law to rein in the often-insular CIA and the domineering defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld.
Nervousness has already emerged about an internal Pentagon proposal to consolidate intelligence activities under a single official, Defense Undersecretary Stephen Cambone said, which has been interpreted by some as an effort to control access to defense intelligence.
Negroponte said the move would not preclude his ability to work directly with the defense intelligence agencies, such as the code-breakers at the National Security Agency, and said the law gives him substantial authority that he can stretch to the utmost.
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said he's too often seen the senior intelligence leaders exaggerate or misrepresent information to support the White House. Levin has been particularly critical of former CIA Director George Tenet, who called the case against Saddam Hussein a slam dunk.
Illustrating the breadth of issues that Negroponte faces, senators asked how he'd deal with issues of foreign detainees abused in U.S. custody and whether he'd allow the transfer of prisoners to other countries for interrogation -where critics say they might be tortured.
Negroponte vowed agencies would be in full compliance with the law.
Negroponte, the father of five adopted Honduran children, has held the ambassadorships to the United Nations, Mexico and the Philippines.
17
Archives
The Associated Press
