President Bush has nominated John Negroponte as the first Director of National Intelligence:
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush on Thursday named John Negroponte as America’s first national intelligence director, congressional sources said Thursday.
It’s a sudden job change for Negroponte, a career diplomat. The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations has been serving as U.S. ambassador in Baghdad sincet June.
I’ve already expressed my skepticism about this new position but I doubt that Negroponte will have any difficulty getting confirmed.
UPDATE
Reactions from around the blogosphere
| James Joyner | “At first blush, though, this strikes me as a very odd choice. Negroponte has no background in intelligence or managing a huge bureaucracy of which I’m aware.” |
| Steven Taylor | I am mildly surprised by the pick, as he is hardly a popular fellow on the left side of the aisle. Further, he is hardly the most charismatic of individuals. |
| The American Street | I thought that this administration had lost the power to shock me, but apparently I wasn’t giving them nearly enough credit. Ladies and gentlemen, nominated in the category of National Intelligence Director, John “we have more nuns than we need anyway” Negroponte. |
| Jude Nagurney Camwell |
Get outta town!
You’ve got to be pulling my leg. Mr. Death Squad? No way! Uh uh. Nun-killers need not apply. |
| Jazz Shaw | Negroponte appears to have very little in the way of qualifications for this extremely important position. His “claims to fame” in both his tenure as UN ambassador and occupation honcho in Iraq resulted in dubious “success” at best. So what is the motivation for handing him this post? Could it be anything beyond the loyalty that George W. Bush values over all things? |
| W. David Stephenson |
There’s no question that John Negroponte has the brains to be National Intelligence Director, and has been described as “the consummate professional.” The big question, especially given the sharp elbows and well-honed infighting skills of the various intelligence agencies, whether he can reign these bad boys in and create a seamless intelligence program. He does bring baggage with him, especially because of his role during the Reagan Administration in covert funding of the Contras and covering up human rights abuses in Honduras, and because he helped trump up the bogus Iraq war while Bush’s UN Ambassador. His Deputy, Gen. Michael Hayden, currently director of the NSA, could be critical to the new office’s success or failure because he does have experience in the intelligence community |
| Weapons of Mass Discussion | My gut reaction is that this is a bad choice…I’ll have to research this guy a bit more, but I seem to recall this guy having a diplomatic background rather than an intelligence gathering background…not sure what good it will be to have a diplomat in charge of intelligence agencies… |
| Eric Alterman | has a long quote from his book, When Presidents Lie |
| The Mahablog | Negroponte’s nomination is another signal that actual national security — you know, making us citizens safer from terrorist attacks — is less important to the White House than some neocon fantasy of global American domination by any means necessary. |
| Coldheartedtruth |
Bottom line is that this is a guy who has been in the loop dating back to his time spent working for Henry Kissinger. Again it seems that the personal qualifications are being overrun with a character assassination that appears based in deep seeded anger. Now I do not know enough about the man to cast a final judgement, but so far all I have seen is wild speculation and unfounded accusations of personal involvement in various atrocities. |
| WindyCityLefty | Brilliant, Dubya. Not only do we have a guy who condoned torture as our Attorney General, we’re going to have a guy who built a military base in Honduras where people were tortured in charge of the FBI and CIA. Negroponte stresses that he had no awareness of the Honduran death squads that roamed the country on his watch, but there is a ton of evidence to the contrary. Basically, he either knew or was completely aloof and incompetent. Both qualities that we don’t want running the CIA and FBI. |
| Steve Soto |
…Bush makes the circle-closing complete by naming John Negroponte, he of our failures at the United Nations, in Iraq, and years ago in the travesty of supporting the death squads in Honduras, to be the nation’s first Director of National Intelligence. Yeah, I’d say that Bush may be happy with the cast of characters he has around him, but I doubt that we are any safer now than we were on September 10, 2001. |
| Dave Wissing | It will be interesting to see how Democrats play this. When Negroponte was a nominee for Ambassador to Iraq, he was confirmed by a 95-3 vote. The three Democrats voting against him were Mark Dayton, Dick Durbin and Tom Harkin. John Kerry was one of the two who did not bother to show up and vote. |
| Power Line | The nominee has received praise from Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton who, as heads of the 9/11 commission, pushed for the creation of this position. I was no big fan of the concept or of the overall performance of its authors, but Negroponte seems like a good choice. |
| Bloggledygook |
The nomination of John Negroponte to be the first director of national intelligence should be welcomed as a move to put the right person in the right job. And not just because it’s fun to say “Negroponte.” It is fitting that the post is being filled by a career diplomat with extensive knowledge of and experience with running covert operations, mounting counter-insurgencies and what damage failed and flawed intelligence can do to Us credibility. |
Reading Bush’s mind:
“Running all intel through a single office is bad. But I don’t want to waste capital opposing the idea. Guess I’ll find someone who deserves a fancy office but won’t cause too much trouble with the agencies.”
Seems as if I’m in the minority here. But at least the guys from Power Line agree(somewhat)that if we had to have this post, it might as well be Negroponte. I do think that Hayden’s influence will be critical.