PRESIDENT Bush just made a very promising choice for our first national intelligence director: Ambassador John Negroponte. Thinking creatively, Bush picked someone who has had to rely upon intelligence, rather than an insider who can't see beyond the system's self-satisfied, mammoth bureaucracy.
Normally, a diplomat would be a terrible choice to drive intel reform. Too many diplos just don't have the punch to make things happen. Negroponte's different. He's a hitter. With experience in Honduras during Central America's years of crisis, as well as in Mexico, the Philippines, the United Nations and now Iraq, this guy knows what it means to be blindsided by bad intel.
His Baghdad sojourn will have brought him up to date both on the intel system's improving capabilities and its remaining inadequacies. Based on his track record for getting things done — blood on the floor be damned — Negroponte may be just the right man to provide top cover for Porter Goss, the Director of Central Intelligence, who's been shaking up the CIA and forcing essential changes. |