Bush picks Negroponte for intelligence chief

WASHINGTON -- President Bush named John D. Negroponte yesterday to fill the new post of director of national intelligence, turning to a longtime loyalist and the current US ambassador to Iraq for the politically sensitive job.

If confirmed by the Senate, Negroponte will oversee the Central Intelligence Agency and a hodgepodge of 14 smaller agencies that report to various Cabinet departments, and have historically had separate bosses. He will face the challenge of defining the high-profile post while curbing the turf battles and infighting that have plagued US intelligence agencies, at a time when their missions are changing in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Bush, who reportedly offered the job to others before naming Negroponte, said the ambassador will be his closest day-to-day adviser on intelligence matters. The president said Negroponte's experience in foreign affairs, Washington politics, and work with information produced by the intelligence community will allow him to ensure that intelligence information flows freely among agencies.

''If we're going to stop the terrorists before they strike, we must ensure that our intelligence agencies work as a single, unified enterprise," the president said at a news conference held to announce the nomination. ''John will make sure that those whose duty it is to defend America have the information we need to make the right decisions."

Negroponte, 65, was ambassador to the United Nations from 2001 to 2004, before becoming the American ambassador to Iraq. He has served in a variety of diplomatic and national security posts during a long government career, and said yesterday that he looked forward to a job that would ''no doubt be the most challenging assignment I have undertaken in more than 40 years of government service."

He is expected to gain Senate confirmation, as he did in 2001 to become UN ambassador, and his nomination was praised by Republicans and Democrats yesterday. But his 2001 confirmation was delayed for several months, as senators focused on his role in the Reagan administration's secret operations to oust the Sandinista government of Nicaragua -- a key component of the Iran-Contra scandal.

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that a confirmation hearing will be held as soon as Negroponte's duties in Iraq are complete. An aide said that could be weeks away.

Negroponte was the US ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, and he has faced persistent questions over whether he knowingly allowed human rights abuses conducted by a Honduran death squad that was trained in part by the CIA. Negroponte has denied wrongdoing and testified before a Senate panel that he did not believe the Honduran government was formally involved in the death squad.

He has served as ambassador to Iraq for less than a year, and some Democrats expressed concern that Iraq would have a new US ambassador in the critical period following Iraqi national elections. Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he is worried ''about the message we are sending to Iraq and the rest of the world by removing our ambassador to Iraq so soon after he took office, and at such a critical point in the transition to a democratically elected Iraqi government."

The creation of a director of national intelligence was a key recommendation of the Sept. 11 Commission, which found that intelligence gathered by the CIA, the military, the FBI, and other agencies was not pieced together by American intelligence officials in the months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Lee H. Hamilton, who served as the commission's vice chairman, said Negroponte will face ''formidable" challenges in seeking to change the culture of entrenched bureaucracies. But he added that Negroponte is well positioned to achieve the goals, and said Bush seems committed to helping him do it.

''There's bound to be some bureaucratic fights, so he's going to have to be very tough-minded," Hamilton said. ''He has, I think, sufficient authorities in the law."

The job will put Negroponte above CIA Director Porter J. Goss, whose post previously made him the nation's top intelligence official. But how that works in practice remains to be seen; Negroponte has never worked for an intelligence agency in the past, and career officials at the CIA, the Pentagon, the National Security Agency, and elsewhere may not be ready to give up their areas of influence, said Michael E. O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

''The question is, will this position succeed, and frankly, it's not preordained," O'Hanlon said. ''It's just not clear if this person is going to wind up having much clout. In practice, he doesn't operationally control anything, other than a small staff."

The Associated Press, citing an anonymous administration official, reported that Robert Gates, the former CIA director, was the White House's first choice, but he and other candidates did not accept the post over concerns about the job's authority.

At the news conference, Bush made clear that Negroponte will determine how the US intelligence budget is set, saying he is confident the control over purse strings and access to the president will give Negroponte ''a lot of influence." The president also sought to assuage fears at other agencies by noting that the ''existing chain of command" will be left intact at the agencies, and by noting that military commanders will retain access to the intelligence they need.

Bush tapped Lieutenant General Michael Hayden to be Negroponte's deputy. Hayden has been director of the National Security Agency since 1999, and has garnered experience in producing and analyzing intelligence.

Representative Martin T. Meehan, a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said Negroponte will have to confront several challenges simultaneously. Negroponte will have to get agencies that have treated each other with suspicion to work together, and will have to resist any Bush administration or Pentagon-driven efforts to insert a political dimension into intelligence, Meehan said.

''How do you get the agencies that historically have been so turf-conscious to work in a cooperative way, so intelligence is accurate?" said Meehan, a Democrat from Lowell. ''The question will be how aggressive he's going to be in protecting the intelligence community from political and ideological interference."

Material from the Associated Press was used in this report. Rick Klein can be reached at rklein@globe.com.