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A win for the
realists
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - In choosing John Negroponte
as the country's first National Director of
Intelligence (NDI), US President George W Bush has
opted for a hawkish, tough, ruthless realist who
 could very well clash
with more ideological forces in the
administration.
Currently Bush's
ambassador in Baghdad, Negroponte had never been
mentioned as a candidate over weeks of media
speculation. The surprise choice carries a lot of
uncertainties, if for no other reason than it
remains unclear precisely how much power the NDI
will wield over the budgets and operations of
Washington's 16 intelligence agencies.
The
nominee may also find it rough going in Senate
confirmation hearings, primarily due to
still-unresolved charges that as ambassador to
Honduras in the early 1980s, Negroponte played a
key role in setting up the "Contra" army that
waged war against Sandinista-ruled Nicaragua.
He has been accused of promoting the most
authoritarian and brutal elements within the
Honduran army to positions of near-unassailable
power, and misleading the media and Congress about
both actions, as well as about the existence and
operations of a Central Intelligence
Agency-trained military death squad.
"I
wish we had found someone less controversial to
get this off to a smooth start," former CIA
director Stansfield Turner told the Christian
Science Monitor after Bush's announcement.
But Negroponte's controversial tenure in
Honduras has to date failed to derail what is
widely regarded as one of the most impressive
careers in the foreign service of the past
generation. After Honduras, Negroponte served as
ambassador to Mexico, the Philippines, the United
Nations, and, since coming out of retirement last
July, in Iraq, winning praise in each locale for
shrewdness, discretion and effectiveness.
As important, perhaps, in the present
context is his association with the "realist"
faction within the administration. A long-time
friend of former secretary of state Colin Powell,
for whom he served as deputy national security
adviser under Ronald Reagan, Negroponte is
generally considered to be a pragmatist - albeit
one with a hawkish reputation that dates to his
work as a young diplomat in Vietnam in the 1960s
and later as an aide to former secretary of state
Henry Kissinger.
As ambassador in Baghdad
he oversaw the effective transfer of US policy in
Iraq from the Pentagon to the State Department.
With Powell's departure, an ongoing purge by CIA
director Porter Goss of the top operational and
analytical ranks of the agency, and the
pro-democracy, missionary - not to say messianic -
rhetoric of Bush's Inaugural and State of the
Union addresses, many analysts have concluded that
the more-ideological wing of the administration,
concentrated in the civilian leadership at the
Pentagon and in the office of Vice President Dick
Cheney, have a clear field in Bush's second term.
But that conclusion may yet prove
premature. Despite her adoption of Bush's
rhetorical style, Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice has made a series of appointments -
specifically Trade Representative Robert Zoellick
to be her deputy and North Atlantic Treaty
Organization Ambassador Nicholas Burns to the
number three post at State - that suggest Foggy
Bottom will remain a realist stronghold in the
second term.
Moreover, the fact that Bush
was inclined to choose a realist as his DNI -
before Negroponte, he had asked his father's first
choice for CIA director, Robert Gates, to take the
job - adds to the notion that he remains open to
advice from people who may not necessarily share
the worldview of aggressive unilateralists like
Cheney and Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld,
neo-conservatives, and the Christian Right.
That assessment is further reinforced by
Bush's choice to serve as deputy DNI,
Lieutenant-General Michael Hayden, who currently
heads the National Security Agency (NSA) and is
also regarded as pragmatic and close to the
leadership of the uniformed military, another
realist, if hawkish, bastion.
The
Pentagon, which currently controls about 80% of
the intelligence budget, has been especially
concerned about the DNI's authority to influence
the allocation of the intelligence budget and
priorities to be pursued by the intelligence
agencies under its control.
"[Unlike]
Negroponte, Hayden knows the Pentagon and he knows
intelligence," one Congressional aide told IPS.
"That will be critical to Negroponte's ability to
exert his control over the intelligence
community."
Indeed, the Pentagon largely
succeeded in watering down the sweeping statutory
powers originally proposed for the DNI by the 9-11
Commission and supported by the Senate as the
intelligence-reform legislation made its way
through Congress in the latter part of last year.
The Pentagon's success in diluting the DNI's
authority has been cited as one reason why Gates
and former attorney-general William Barr
reportedly rejected Bush's appeal to take the job.
To what extent Negroponte can restore
those powers - which included the authority to
allocate money among the intelligence agencies and
hire and fire the heads of those agencies - will
be a big test of his bureaucratic clout.
Bush, who lacks a long-time personal
relationship with Negroponte of the kind he has
built up with Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice, however,
indicated in making the nomination that he intends
to give him real access.
The CIA's Goss
will be reporting to Bush himself through
Negroponte, the president said, adding that
"people who control the money, people who have
access to the president generally have a lot of
influence. And that's why John Negroponte is going
to have a lot of influence. He will set the
budgets."
He also said Negroponte will be
"my primary briefer", ensuring that the diplomat
will get daily face-time with his boss, something
which only Rice, as national security adviser,
former CIA director George Tenet and Cheney have
enjoyed to date.
The impact of that on
actual policy remains to be seen, but Negroponte,
unlike some senior officials around Bush, is
considered much less likely to shade the
intelligence according to what he believes the
president wants to hear.
Since he resigned
his position under Kissinger to protest what he
considered to be his boss's betrayal of South
Vietnamese leaders during the Paris peace
negotiations in the early 1970s, he has gained a
reputation for supreme self-confidence and
speaking his mind in private, even if he hews to
the official line in public.
"John is a
very conservative, very prudent, and very tough
diplomat who plays his cards close to his chest,"
said one retired foreign service officer who has
been close to Negroponte since his Vietnam days.
"You can be sure he will be hawkish in policy
preferences, but definitely on the realist side of
the spectrum."
"If Cheney and [his chief
of staff I Lewis] Libby and the Pentagon civilians
tried to cherry-pick the intelligence and send it
up to the White House as they did before the war
in Iraq, he would resist it. This is the guy who
stood up to Henry Kissinger."
(Inter Press
Service) |
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