In New Job, Spymaster Draws Bipartisan Criticism

The top Republican and the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee have disagreed publicly about many things, but on one issue they have recently come together. Both are disquieted by the first-year performance of John D. Negroponte, the director of national intelligence.

The fear expressed by the two lawmakers, Representatives Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan, and Jane Harman, Democrat of California, is that Mr. Negroponte, the nation's overseer of spy agencies, is creating just another blanket of bureaucracy, muffling rather than clarifying the dangers lurking in the world. In an April 6 report, the Intelligence Committee warned that Mr. Negroponte's office could end up not as a streamlined coordinator but as "another layer of large, unintended and unnecessary bureaucracy."

The committee went so far as to withhold part of Mr. Negroponte's budget request until he convinced members he had a workable plan. The creation of Mr. Negroponte's post was Congress's answer to the failure to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks and to the bungled prewar reports on Iraqi weapons. The overhaul, the most sweeping reorganization of intelligence in a half-century, was intended to establish a primary intelligence adviser to the president, to ensure that 16 turf-conscious agencies share information and to see that dissenting views are not squelched.

(snip)
"I don't think we have a lot to show yet for the intelligence reform," said Mark M. Lowenthal, a former top C.I.A. official and Congressional intelligence staff member. "What's their vision for running the intelligence community? My sense is there's a huge hunger for leadership that's not being met." Mr. Lowenthal said he spoke regularly with intelligence officers about Mr. Negroponte's office, and heard little praise. "At the agencies, officers are telling me, 'All we got is another layer,' " he said.


more
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/20/washington/20intel.html?hp&ex=1145505600&en=f3c7368f535e8849&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Raise your hand if you thought this would be the precise result and was indeed, the *intended* result

(eg go around us Law, engage in trading with an "enemy" (and jrs target of today), in order to try to topple a govt in Central America)... and can anyone expect thoughtful policy? Development of a plan that is related to improving intelligence rather than to achieve some political goal for 'the team'? In this case - perhaps the goal is primarily symbolic? Good for congress slowing this down.

"was intended to establish a primary intelligence adviser to the president, to ensure that 16 turf-conscious agencies share information and to see that dissenting views are not squelched."


This is worded so as to insinuate that it was these 'turf-conscious' agencies would 'do the right thing'. See how that follows the official 'puke line that it was the intelligence agencies, not the WH, that asserted faulty intelligence.

When, in fact, we all know it was the WH and the 'Office of Special Plans', and a few more double-secret agencies created by Rummy, Chimpy, Dicky and the gang. :grr:

And that whole thing about 'dissenting views'... well, that's just rich. :rofl:


Here's a bit from a Blumenthal piece that reveals what this (mal)admin really thinks about dissenting views:

"Two weeks ago, Fitzgerald filed a motion before the federal court in the Libby case stating that his investigation had proved that the White House engaged in "concerted action" from "a plan to discredit, punish or seek revenge against" former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who revealed that the rationale of the Iraq war was based on false information that the White House knew was bogus. Fitzgerald declared further that he had gathered "evidence that multiple officials in the White House" had outed his wife's clandestine identity to reporters as an element of revenge."

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/sidney_blumenthal/2006/04/walking_the_white_house_plank.html

Pitiful, just pitiful.