NYT: Speculation Surrounds Choice by Spy Chief to Take Step Back

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/05/washington/05intel.html?_r=1&pagewanted=2&oref=slogin

WASHINGTON, Jan. 4 — From the start, John D. Negroponte felt miscast as the nation’s first director of national intelligence, a diplomat who never seemed comfortable in spook’s clothing, colleagues and friends of his said.

Mr. Negroponte leaves his office at Bolling Air Force Base after only 19 months and mixed reviews. The base is the home of a new intelligence bureaucracy created to solve the problems laid bare after the Sept. 11 attacks, but Mr. Negroponte barely had time to get it running. All over Washington on Thursday, there were questions about whether Mr. Negroponte was there long enough to lay the foundations of real change and whether his transfer suggested that the Bush administration was less committed than it claimed to be to an intelligence overhaul that President Bush had billed as the most significant restructuring of American spy agencies in half a century.

Senior administration officials said it was Mr. Bush who personally asked Mr. Negroponte to take on the diplomatic post sometime last month. It was the second time in two years that Mr. Bush had turned to Mr. Negroponte to fill a critical job: Mr. Negroponte became the director of national intelligence only after several other candidates had turned down the job. This time around, Ms. Rice had requested over the summer that Mr. Negroponte become her deputy. But the decision languished for months as the White House sought an adequate replacement for the spy chief, and as Mr. Negroponte vacillated between remaining at the helm of an intelligence community that numbered roughly 100,000 people and a return to the State Department, in the shadow of the administration’s most visible international figure.

“He came into it after just a year in Iraq, and someone without a strong background in intelligence, and I think he is leaving awfully early, given the importance of getting this right,” said Robert Hutchings, the senior diplomat in residence at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton, who once headed the National Intelligence Council.
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“I think it is quite irresponsible,” he said.

Mr. Hutchings said the departure would compound “three or four years of nonstop turmoil” within American intelligence agencies.

This is such total Bull Crap!

It makes me want to tear my hair out in dismay. I feel as though I'm reading a chapter right out of "1984."

Here's a quick time line on Iraq and Negroponte:

1) bush manufactures a reason to go to war with Iraq
2) his administration screws the pooch after the Iraqi army refuses to fight
3) bush blames the fiasco on the US Intelligence community, who really can't talk about their activities or successes... but they were right about Iraq
4) bush puts Rice in charge of Iraq policy (not really, just for show)
5) bush chooses Negroponte to be the first Ambassador to the new country of Iraq - things get a lot worse in Iraq
6) bush appoints Negroponte as Intelligence Czar, despite his apparent lack of experience in Intelligence work
7) (who knows how much damage he did to our Intelligence agencies while overseeing them)
8) Negroponte is reassigned to a considerably less prestigious position within the State Department...
9) to be continued (hopefully in court)

Let's focus on item number 5 for a minute. Why was Negroponte chosen for this extremely sensitive diplomatic mission? His resume includes previous ambassador appointments to three countries. But in each case (except the Philippines 93-96), he was sent by the Reagan/Bush 41 administration hawks to oversee diplomatic missions to murderous right wing junta's. So his specialty seems to be in dealing with the scum of the earth, and finding out where republican (not US) policy coincides with reactionary fascists policies.

Here's a little snippet about John Negroponte from Wikopedia:

"He has been criticized because of his involvement in the covert funding of the Contras, and there are allegations that he was involved in a cover up of human rights abuses carried out by CIA-trained operatives in Honduras, where he was the U.S. chief of mission in the 1980s. It was in Honduras that Negroponte first worked with the former executive director of the CIA, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo. According to The New York Times, Negroponte carried out "the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinistas government in Nicaragua."

Seems like he was well qualified to give orders to a puppet government living in a two square mile fortified compound... safe from the people they supposedly govern. But let's not mistake Negroponte for a real diplomat, any more than one might mistake John Bolton for a diplomat.

So, then Negroponte is given the job of overseeing all national intelligence, despite a total lack of experience. Now, one could argue that his roles of ambassador were essentially spy missions, since he established close connections to the blood drenched paramilitary organizations in each country... but that's a stretch. No, his real charge was to be a political officer at the top of the intelligence community because the bush administration has waged war against the FBI, CIA, and NSA... preferring to set up their own "intelligence offices," filled with other political officers.

Fast forward. Negroponte is leaving the position that was deemed to be so important for one considerably less powerful in the State Department. Apparently, Condi wanted his expertise in Iraq back within her Department. Right.

Who sits around meetings and asks for their executive peers to be demoted and placed under their management? That just doesn't happen in the real world, not out in the open anyways. If someone under performs on an executive level, that person is let go, not demoted. Executives rarely move backward, and never willingly.

So, what's going on here?

Here's my guess. Rice has done about the same job as Secretary of State, that she did as NSA Adviser. That is to say perhaps the worst in the history of the position. She has zero credibility outside that of a policy analyst regarding Russia. In that capacity she is still effective, but nowhere else. She also has zero power and influence. In other words, she is window dressing for the bush administration.

Enter Negroponte. Gates may not be on board with the whole "Blame it on Intelligence" gang. So, it might be time for the political officer to move on. On to Iraq of course. He knows how to handle murderous thugs, and persuade them to do the US's bidding. He will assure what constitutes a government in Iraq, that the United States will turn a blind eye to anything deemed necessary to restore order in Iraq. Anything. And we'll pay for it too.

That's his new job responsibilities.

I saw some AEI guys on cable tv just before Christmas and they made it clear that Condi was 'personna non grata'
This could be why (Richard Perle again, June 06):

Why Did Bush Blink on Iran? (Ask Condi)

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran knows what he wants: nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them; suppression of freedom at home and the spread of terrorism abroad; and the "shattering and fall of the ideology and thoughts of the liberal democratic systems."

President Bush, too, knows what he wants: an irreversible end to Iran's nuclear weapons program, the "expansion of freedom in all the world" and victory in the war on terrorism.

The State Department and its European counterparts know what they want: negotiations.

For more than five years, the administration has dithered. Bush gave soaring speeches, the Iranians issued extravagant threats and, in 2003, the State Department handed the keys to the impasse to the British, French and Germans (the "E.U.-3"), who offered diplomatic valet parking to an administration befuddled by contradiction and indecision. And now, on May 31, the administration offered to join talks with Iran on its nuclear program.

How is it that Bush, who vowed that on his watch "the worst weapons will not fall into the worst hands," has chosen to beat such an ignominious retreat?

Proximity is critical in politics and policy. And the geography of this administration has changed. Condoleezza Rice has moved from the White House to Foggy Bottom, a mere mile or so away. What matters is not that she is further removed from the Oval Office; Rice's influence on the president is undiminished. It is, rather, that she is now in the midst of -- and increasingly represents -- a diplomatic establishment that is driven to accommodate its allies even when (or, it seems, especially when) such allies counsel the appeasement of our adversaries.

(snip)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/23/AR2006062301375.html

Dump Condi: Foreign policy conservatives charge State Dept. has hijacked Bush agenda

Conservative national security allies of President Bush are in revolt against Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, saying that she is incompetent and has reversed the administration’s national security and foreign policy agenda.

The conservatives, who include Newt Gingrich, Richard Perle and leading current and former members of the Pentagon and National Security Council, have urged the president to transfer Miss Rice out of the State Department and to an advisory role. They said Miss Rice, stemming from her lack of understanding of the Middle East, has misled the president on Iran and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

"The president has yet to understand that people make policy and not the other way around," a senior national security policy analyst said. "Unlike Powell, Condi is loyal to the president. She is just incompetent on most foreign policy issues."

The criticism of Miss Rice has been intense and comes from a range of Republican loyalists, including current and former aides in the Defense Department and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. They have warned that Iran has been exploiting Miss Rice's inexperience and incompetence to accelerate its nuclear weapons program. They expect a collapse of her policy over the next few months.

(more slagging off ... )

http://www.insightmag.com/Media/MediaManager/Condi2.htm

:shrug: