NEGROPONTE RECEIVES INDICATIONS OF STRONG BIPARTISAN SUPPORT
National Intelligence Director-designate, Ambassador John Negroponte pledged to reform the Intelligence Community even as senior Democrats urged Negroponte to assert his authority over the IC as quickly as possible.
Leftists and human rights activists had opposed Negroponte’s nomination due to his role during the Reagan administration implementing anti-communist U.S. policy in Central America that centered upon defeating Communist insurgencies in El Salvador and Honduras and overthrowing the pro-Soviet, Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. Negroponte proved to be an able field operative as well as a policy hardliner in Honduras, well to the right of his fellow State Department colleagues.
Democrats appear to be disinclined to pursue these avenues of inquiry, perhaps in the hopes that Negroponte has the credibility in the IC and the ruthlessness to ram through Intelligence reforms over the objections of Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon bureaucracy.
J.:
April 13th, 2005 at 5:56 pm
Ahhh, but will Negroponte really have the clout to ram reforms through the Pentagon? Bush seemed disinclined to give the NCI that authority over budget and manpower issues required to really cause change. If you don’t control the money, don’t bother calling.
mark:
April 13th, 2005 at 6:56 pm
J.
Well, the whole issue revolves around Presidential support and always has, not statutory authority per se. The NDI’s role is a reprise of what was originally envisioned for the DCI.
The difference between a Bill Casey/Allen Dulles DCI who really ran the IC and guys like Woolsey who just marked time, was the attitudes of the President whom they served. Negroponte seems to have some real ” juice” with Bush but there are very few who have ever crossed Rumsfeld ( in any of his incarnations) and succeeded.
Some of this is academic, the military gets the lion’s share of the budget due to tactical intelligence requirements and no one will take that away for fear of being blamed for a battlefield disaster. On the margins though, resources can be moved to higher priorities.