WEAKENED INTELLIGENCE DIRECTOR SPENDS HOURS EACH DAY AT PRIVATE LUXURY CLUB:
"
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," Congressional Quarterly
(CQ) reports.
"He spends three hours there [every] Monday through Friday," says a "senior
counterterrorism official" quoted by the paper. What explains all the
leisure time? As reporter Laura Rozen notes, the larger point is that
"Negroponte has the free time because [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld
and [Defense Under Secretary of Intelligence Stephen] Cambone are the ones
running intelligence policy, with scarce oversight from anybody, either the
White House intel czar, or Congress."
Indeed, "Washington's conventional wisdom" is that Negroponte's position "is
a joke," CQ reports. "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."
http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/track.jsp?key=90623434&url_num=78&url=http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/003787.html
Must be nice working (?) for the Romans......err.....Republicans and not
doing anything but living high on my tax money.
.
|
