CQ HOMELAND SECURITY - INTELLIGENCE

March 3, 2006 - 8:44 p.m.

Negroponte Makes the Most of His Post as Minister Without Portfolio

By Jeff Stein, CQ Staff

On many a workday lunchtime, the nominal boss of U.S. intelligence, John D.
Negroponte, can be found at a private club in downtown Washington, getting a
massage, taking a swim, and having lunch, followed by a good cigar and a
perusal of the daily papers in the club's library.

"He spends three hours there [every] Monday through Friday," gripes a senior
counterterrorism official, noting that the former ambassador has a security
detail sitting outside all that time in chase cars. Others say they've seen
the Director of National Intelligence at the University Club, a 100-year-old
mansion-like redoubt of dark oak panels and high ceilings a few blocks from
the White House, only "several" times a week.

Surely Negroponte needs a comfort zone, forced as he is to spends hours in
the witness chair in front of congressional committees, fielding hot
potatoes on subjects over which he has no control - the NSA's warrantless
surveillance, domestic spying by secret military intelligence units, paying
newspapers in Iraq to run pro-U.S. stories.

Lacking control must be a new experience for Negroponte. In the 1980s he was
ambassador to Honduras, base camp for U.S.-backed attacks on left-wing
Nicaragua. More recently, he was the U.S. proconsul in Baghdad. Negroponte's
reputation as a very demanding boss, in fact, preceded him to the Office of
the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), where aides fretted at the
prospect of 15-hour days and memos thrown back in their faces by this
disciple of Henry A. Kissinger.

But there seems to be a new, relaxed John Negroponte. And some close
observers think they know why.

He's figured out the job. Which is to say, he really doesn't have much
control over the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies.

So why not hang at the University Club?

Negroponte spokesman Carl Kroft takes serious issue with that portrayal.

"He's the hardest working person in U.S. intelligence," Kroft said. "He's
hard at work from the early hours of the morning to late every night. The
job never ends."

On the Hot Seat

"We appointed you to be the person to (run) all intelligence," Sen. Dianne
Feinstein, D-Calif., lectured Negroponte at a Feb. 28 hearing of the Senate
Select Intelligence Committee. (CQ Transcripts: Senate Select Intelligence
Committee hearing, Feb. 28, 2006)

Feinstein asked Negroponte about "recent media reports [that] have
spotlighted a number of activities that appear to be related to intelligence
collection or covert action, but that well may be outside of the official
intelligence community's channels.

"For example," Feinstein continued, "military databases of suspicious
activity reports . . . by the (domestic military) counterintelligence field
activity, or CIFA; and, secondly, a Pentagon program to secretly pay Iraqi
newspapers to run pro-American articles.

"Were these activities subject to your approval and oversight?"

Negroponte's answer was short-circuited by an unidentified voice, according
to the CQ transcript, quite possibly his deputy, former Air Force general
and NSA chief Michael Hayden.

"Ma'am, I don't believe that either of those activities would fall into Mr.
Negroponte's area. They are Department of Defense programs, I believe."

"Now, let me raise this problem then," Feinstein continued.

"Now, I know how tough it is. But if you didn't know and you didn't give a
go-ahead [to domestic military spying], it indicates to me that, for 85
percent of the budget, which is defense-related, that you're not going to
have the controls that you should have," Feinstein said.

"You want to comment?"

Negroponte, who not long ago in Baghdad was dismissing senior military
officers with the wave of his hand, had to be feeling an acute wave of
heartburn.

The Director of National Intelligence was forced to concede that the U.S.
intelligence activities Feinstein was asking him about had "not risen to the
level of my office." In any event, they came "under the direction of the
undersecretary of defense for intelligence" - a pipsqueak, relatively
speaking.

Negroponte said he "understood" that the Pentagon was doing an internal
review of spying programs because of a congressional uproar.

"But will you get the results of that review?" Feinstein asked.

"Yes," promised Negroponte, dismissed like a schoolboy, "I will get those
results."

How Many Divisions?

Washington's conventional wisdom these days is that ODNI is a joke.

The main reason is that Negroponte's group has little power over the
Pentagon's covert actions.

It's not his fault. Congress set it up that way after Rumsfeld and company
worked the rooms of the House and Senate office buildings.

The noted intelligence historian Lock K. Johnson worries that Negroponte
could end up like the National Drug Czar, "with no real power" over U.S. spy
agencies.

Or the Pope, whose political powers Josef Stalin dismissed with a laugh to
worried aides: "The Pope? How many divisions has he got?"

Kroft, Negroponte's spokesman, said in an e-mailed response to a question
that his boss "determines and presents to the President the full U.S.
National Intelligence Program budget."

As for Negroponte's lunches at the University Club, he responded, "As a
matter of policy we do not discuss the Director of National Intelligence's
schedule."

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