Word: dny
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...often said in Washington that only two things really matter: titles and real estate. And it seems that the likely new Director of National Intelligence (DNI), John Negroponte, will have a good helping of both. An "emergency" spending bill that passed the House last week includes $181 million requested by the White House for a new building to house the intelligence chief and his staff. Symbolically at least, it indicates that the DNI--who has the authority to hire 500 employees but whose role in the byzantine intelligence bureaucracy is still not entirely clear--will have a solid foothold...
...Vietnam, Honduras and Iraq, U.S. ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte, 65, is the consummate diplomat--discreet, deliberate and always careful choosing his words, whether in English, French, Greek, Spanish or Vietnamese. So a day after President Bush nominated him to be the nation's first Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Negroponte's brief exchange at a breakfast with the ambassadors representing the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council was telling. Asked by a diplomat whether he should "congratulate you or offer condolences on your nomination," Negroponte replied simply, with a dose of dry, self-deprecating wit that he doesn...
Bush went out of his way to say that Negroponte will deliver the President's daily intelligence briefing and will have ultimate authority over the nation's sprawling intel apparatus, including an estimated $40 billion annual budget. But considering how vague the legislation that established the DNI is, Negroponte's ability to actually do that is an open question. In fact, his position puts him smack in the middle of what could be the nastiest bureaucratic battle in Washington for years to come: a tussle over money with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, considered an almost unmatched infighter. Until...
...representing the U.S. at the U.N., working to persuade members of the necessity of war against Iraq. His U.N. tenure may soon seem like a picnic compared with his next assignment. In part owing to the White House's reservations about making drastic changes, the bill establishing the DNI was written with more than enough ambiguity for Rumsfeld and Goss to exploit if they so choose. For instance, the White House resisted giving the new intelligence czar so-called tasking authority over the CIA director, according to one expert, meaning that in practice, Negroponte can't, say, order...
While nominally handing massive new budget powers to the DNI, the law also makes clear that he will not "abrogate the statutory responsibilities" of any existing intelligence-related agency. That could be used by the Pentagon to justify holding onto the purse strings. Because of Rumsfeld's reluctance to challenge Bush's authority directly, it's unlikely Rumsfeld will openly take on Negroponte, but that does not mean he won't assert his will in more subtle ways, such as keeping him out of the loop on small budget issues or stonewalling him on information requests...