Q&A: John Negroponte
Well, it's collegial. I mean, I certainly don't think applying a two-by-four to these 16 different agencies is the way to go about it, particularly since some of them belong to other government departments. It's complex. Not all of them are in my absolutely direct chain of command. I have certain authorities and not others. Probably the most important authority I've got is the preparation of the budget. [I] also play a pretty strong role in collection and analysis requirements–we have this very good system of the National Intelligence Priorities Framework. I think it's a bit more like a coach with a team. And I think that's the leadership style that you've got to think about.
I'm the principal, senior adviser to the president on intelligence matters. I have the privilege of seeing him every day when we do the president's daily intelligence briefing, so I believe that I can bring to the community also a sense of what our most important customer is interested in and wants. So, I think I can serve as a bridge between the community and the White House. I think that's important. Between the access to the president, the budgetary authorities, the question of the National Intelligence Priorities Framework–I think those are ways in which I think I can be helpful and useful to the community and can help them set their agenda. But frankly, I think it's been working reasonably well. It's early to start giving, you know, final grades, but so far, so good.
Is there a place for the two-by-four?
Well, if we use the two-by-four, I'm not a believer in advertising. If we have to exert a little more energetic leadership, I'd rather do that directly to my colleagues in the intelligence community rather than through the media. But I don't shrink from exercising my authority in a very forthright way if I have to.
We wanted to ask about the president's daily brief. The focal point really is this image of you briefing the president of the United States. Can you talk about what it's like?
I don't want to betray confidences and get into details that I think are really more for the president or his immediate staff to talk about. We brief the president six days a week normally, Mondays through Saturdays. Typically he is briefed at 8 o'clock in the morning, for half an hour. There's an actual professional briefer and then myself. And the briefer is the person who presents the material to the president, which is usually in the form of half-dozen or so articles about intelligence matters that would be of interest to him, whether they relate to hot spots around the world or they relate to background on international leaders who he might be meeting in the near future and so forth.
The vice president is there, and so are Mr. Hadley [Stephen Hadley, the president's national security adviser] and Mr. Bolten [Joshua Bolten, Bush's chief of staff]. Now, when the president's not in town and if he's traveling internationally, the briefer, not myself but the briefer who is from the PDB staff, will go with the president and present him his briefing every day. So, whether he's in Washington or not, he always gets his briefing. … The president is very engaged, is very interested, and clearly values this time as a way of being briefed on matters of intelligence interest and as a catalyst, if you will, to discussing some of these issues in depth.
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