Man of the moment
A career diplomat gets the call to make the nation's feuding spy agencies get it together
President Bush's decision to name veteran Ambassador John Negroponte as the country's first director of national intelligence finally ended the great guessing game about who would get (or agree to take) the job. The career diplomat, who served most recently as the American envoy to Baghdad--where he ran the State Department's largest diplomatic mission--is widely regarded as a savvy, no-nonsense bureaucrat with a stern commitment to getting things done. But even Negroponte's formidable skills are apt to be tested by the new job, in which he will have to get the nation's notoriously turf-conscious spy agencies to work together, share their secrets, and generally commit themselves not to repeat the kinds of screw-ups that plagued the intelligence community before the September 11 attacks and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. "He will need those [diplomatic] skills in working with and coordinating our 15 intelligence agencies and the Pentagon," says Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts.
A Yale graduate who speaks five languages, Negroponte, 65, was the U.S. representative to the United Nations when he was selected last year to take on the task of transforming the American role in Iraq and help preparing the way for elections there. During his 37 years at the State Department, Negroponte has served in eight different countries, including as ambassador to Honduras, Mexico, and the Philippines. Despite all that experience, however, the learning curve in the new job is going to be steep, and he knows it. Negroponte said the job would "no doubt be the most challenging assignment I have undertaken in more than 40 years of government service."
For one thing, Negroponte has no experience managing large bureaucracies and massive budgets, and his diplomatic finesse may come up short when he's confronted with the need to knock several spy chiefs' heads together. There's also the possibility that, because of the way the job is structured, Negroponte will not have much authority at all. "This could evolve as just a drug czar's office, with no real power," warns Loch Johnson, an intelligence scholar at the University of Georgia. "If the president makes it clear that this man is in charge of intelligence, then this has a chance of working."
The president appeared to do just that. "Ultimately," Bush said, in announcing Negroponte's appointment, "John will make decisions on the budget." In Washington's power corridors, that's the difference between night and day. Roberts, who had pushed for giving the new intelligence director clear power over funds, welcomed Bush's remarks. "If there was any concern about the authority of the DNI," he said, "the president put it to rest."
But hold on. In reality, Negroponte will have only slightly more authority than the director of central intelligence has had for years. On paper, the DCI, who also served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, was responsible for assembling and submitting the entire intelligence community's budget to Congress. Once it got to Capitol Hill, though, other agencies, and particularly the Pentagon, which actually controls about four fifths of the billions spent annually on intelligence gathering and analysis, wreaked havoc with the process. No one who knows CIA Director Porter Goss and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would call them shrinking violets. Negroponte, in other words, is going to have his work cut out for him. Although as one top intelligence official who knows him said, Negroponte is not just a skilled diplomat but "an SOB." That could turn out to be the single most important requirement for the job.
The new intelligence chief, as it turns out, won't have to fight his battle alone. Bush named Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, the director of the eavesdropping National Security Agency, as Negroponte's deputy. The active-duty Air Force general is a widely respected veteran of the intelligence community with long experience in balancing the needs of the nation's civilian and military spies. "Their combined experience and the good chemistry they have personally," said Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman Jay Rockefeller, "should help ensure their effectiveness."
Negroponte is expected to sail through Senate confirmation hearings despite questions about his human-rights record in Honduras. Roberts says he will gavel the hearings to order as soon as Negroponte can wrap things up in Baghdad.
With David E. Kaplan
This story appears in the February 28, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.