Q&A: John Negroponte
What's it like to actually be there briefing the president of the United States about all these cutting-edge issues and our best intelligence? Does the weight of it ever strike you?
It's a great responsibility. I agree with you, it's a great responsibility. I think it's a great responsibility for the analysts who are drafting these items and for the briefer who actually presents them. I had experience doing that previously as the deputy national security adviser under Colin Powell because President Reagan took his briefing in a slightly different way. He didn't have a separate intelligence briefing; he took it as part of his national security meeting every day. But it's a very serious responsibility.
I wanted to ask about the National Counterterrorism Center, because we're still trying to get a sense of what it does, where the boundaries are, and how all that is working out. The British airplane bomb plot was something of a test for the way information flowed. How are the changes working out?
Well, I think first of all the basic structure of the NCTC has helped address some of the issues that came up after 9/11. The fact that [NCTC chief Redd] has this three-times-daily video conference with all the agencies to compare notes on the latest developments, the fact that he's got so many different data bases pouring in there, and the fact that his center is really looked to as the principal source of analysis of these kinds of developments. … I think that's been very, very good.
The recent bomb plot–I think first of all we've got to give credit where credit is due. And I think the British really bore the brunt of that and carried the load. But given the fact that there was a United States angle to it, and the fact that these airliners would have been destined to the United States, there was very, very close and constant contacts with the British authorities and daily updates, hourly updates, really, on what was happening in the course of that investigation, and we tried to be supportive of our U.K. colleagues in every way we could. But in terms of the success in disrupting that plot, I think in the last analysis you've got to hand it to the U.K. for the way they handled it.
Who is in charge of the hunt for Osama bin Laden?
Not the NCTC. This is a completely coordinated effort between the intelligence community on the one hand and the Pentagon on the other. There's no daylight between them, and that is completely coordinated.
Is that your job, sir?
No. I do not have that operational responsibility.
Does the National Security Council at the White House do that?
It is done and worked on by the CIA and by our military in the field–this is principally between the CIA and [Defense Department's] Central Command. But it is coordinated, and it is integrated, believe me. But they're in charge of it. If the tenor of your question is to say, you know, five years later, do we have clarity on who is in charge of that hunt, there's no question about who is in charge of it.
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