The appointment of John Negroponte to be the first Director of National Intelligence
(DNI) has spurred renewed discussion about whither the U.S. intelligence bureaucracy,
in particular the CIA. The CIA has long been caught in the crossfire from the
left and the right. Human rights critics and left-center internationalists
have charged that the CIA has engineered coups and trained paramilitary units.
On its right flank, the agency has been accused by militarists, old guard conservatives,
and neoconservatives of dangerously underestimating threats to U.S. national
security and of being permeated with liberals, Arabists, and socialists.
The CIA has also faced fire from forces inside government that have been
critical of the CIA’s “threat assessments” and “national
intelligence estimates”—including militarists in Congress and the
Pentagon, other intelligence agencies such as the National Reconnaissance Office,
and even the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB).
(17) Hawks inside and outside the administration have, since the late 1940s,
teamed up in campaigns to emasculate, sideline, and control the CIA.
At the start of the second Bush administration, hawks—in Congress,
the neocon think tanks, and the Pentagon—can point to two major achievements
in their campaign to seize command of the government’s intelligence apparatus.
First was the appointment of Porter Goss (R-FL), the former chairman of the
House Intelligence Committee and a longtime ally of Vice President Cheney,
to head the CIA and direct its reform. Second was the nomination of John Negroponte
as DNI.
The Negroponte and Goss appointments signaled the end of the CIA’s
dominant position among the government’s 15 intelligence agencies. A
diplomat with a four-decade history as a ruthless and highly effective foreign
policy operative, Negroponte has most recently served as the ambassador to
Iraq. Negroponte, who received quick Senate confirmation for his positions
in Iraq and at the UN, can count on bipartisan support for his latest nomination.
Announcing the nomination on February 17th, President Bush said that Negroponte
will be the official who ensures that “our intelligence officials work
as a single, unified enterprise.” As a result of the Intelligence Reform
and Terrorist Prevention Act passed by Congress in late 2004, the newly created
office of DNI—with a staff of 500—will exercise oversight over
the budgets of the diverse intelligence agencies.
CIA’s Skeleton
The appointment of Negroponte brings to an end the 58-year history of the
Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) as the presumed top intelligence chief.
Since the creation of the CIA at the onset of the Cold War, the authority of
the DCI has been unclear. The chief of the CIA has also been the government’s
central intelligence director. Only on rare occasions (notably during Allen
Dulles’ tenure from 1953-61) has he exercised control over the Pentagon’s
intelligence agencies. The authority of most CIA chiefs hasn’t extended
beyond the CIA itself, although the CIA director has—as DCI—been
responsible for providing the president with his Daily Intelligence Briefing.
The DNI is the director of all intelligence offices, including the CIA and
those under the purview of the State Department and Defense Department. According
to the president, Negroponte in his new position will “report directly
to me” and “will make our intelligence efforts better coordinated,
more efficient, and more effective.”
Creating a unified and efficient intelligence apparatus will be a major challenge
given the turf wars that proliferated during Bush’s first term. These
interagency disputes ranged from the creation of new intelligence operations
tightly controlled by Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld (and other ideological allies among the civilian leadership at
the Pentagon, including Stephen
Cambone, Paul
Wolfowitz, and Douglas
Feith), to the sidelining of the State Department and the CIA by the Pentagon,
White House, and Vice President’s Office, and the alliance between congressional
hawks and the Pentagon to successfully modify the intelligence reform bill
so as to reduce the power of the DNI over the Pentagon.
Negroponte’s deputy will be Lieutenant General Michael Hayden, who
directs the Pentagon’s National Security Agency—which is dedicated
to satellite and other high-tech espionage. The Pentagon controls 80% of the
U.S. government’s intelligence budget, which is estimated to exceed $40
billion annually. Presumably, Hayden’s new position at the DNI office
will result in a further downsizing—and perhaps collapse—of the
CIA’s own science and technology division. As an active-duty officer,
Hayden will presumably help Negroponte ease the tensions that have kept the
armed forces, the Pentagon’s civilian leadership, and the State Department
at odds with one another, especially over Iraq policy.
Negroponte’s appointment came on the heels of Rumsfeld’s announcement
that the Pentagon will allow the military to organize highly classified squads
to collect intelligence overseas. The DOD will also use its newly gained congressional
authority to recruit foreign agents in the field, thereby eroding the CIA’s
own authority over human intelligence operations. The appointment of Negroponte
as DNI comes at a time when new CIA chief Goss has signaled that he intends
to rid the agency of those who do not fall into line with Bush administration
policies in the Middle East and elsewhere, leading some high officials to leave
the agency and to widespread morale problems. In the view of one former intelligence
official, “The CIA is a wounded gazelle on the African plain. It’s
a pile of bleached bones.” (18)
Negroponte Not a Neocon
Negroponte is not an ideologue, and certainly not a neoconservative. Since
the 1960s Ambassador Negroponte has earned a reputation as a ruthless and determined
political operative who always gets the job done—however “dirty” or
undiplomatic. Unlike most of President Bush’s foreign policy team, Negroponte
has no direct connections with the network of conservative policy institutes,
think tanks, or foundations that have set the administration’s foreign
and domestic policy agendas.
Not a theorist or strategist, Negroponte instead is commonly regarded as
a pragmatic realist with decidedly hawkish inclinations. (19) Negroponte has
throughout his career maintained a low public profile despite his high-profile
positions—rarely writing or speaking about U.S. foreign or military policy,
apart from diplomatically worded statements issued by his office. Ever the
flexible diplomat, Negroponte has proved comfortable in adopting whatever foreign
policy language—from idealist to realist—is deemed most appropriate
and effective for the job he has been assigned.
Over the past four decades, Negroponte has moved around the globe doing whatever
is required to further what successive U.S. administrations have defined as
U.S. economic interests and national security—including such diverse
roles as advising the puppet U.S. government in South Vietnam during the Vietnam
War, supervising the Reagan administration’s use of Honduras as its logistical
center for the counterinsurgency and counterrevolutionary campaigns in Central
America, ensuring good U.S.-Mexico relations during the NAFTA negotiations,
managing relations with UN Security Council members in the lead-up to the invasion
of Iraq, and overseeing U.S. operations in Iraq during the lead-up to elections
in January 2005.
A History of Counterinsurgency and Counterrevolution
Negroponte, 65, comes well prepared to his new position, after having served
as a junior officer in Vietnam during the war, and as ambassador to the Philippines,
Honduras, Mexico, the United Nations, and most recently Iraq. Negroponte has
over four decades of experience in the Foreign Service and has mastered four
languages: Vietnamese, Spanish, French, and Greek. The son of a Greek shipping
magnate who emigrated to New York during the Second World War, Negroponte began
his career during the Vietnam War—which he said was a “career-defining
experience.” (20) From his early days as a political officer in Vietnam
in the early 1960s, Negroponte quickly ascended to become an aide to former
Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger by the end of the decade. In 1968 Negroponte became the liaison
officer between the U.S. government and North Vietnam’s delegation at
the Paris peace talks. In late 1970 Negroponte became head of the Vietnam office
of the National Security Council staff. In February 1973 Negroponte broke with
NSC Adviser Kissinger over the process of the peace negotiations, which Negroponte
said did not guarantee the security of the government of South Vietnam. (21)
During the Reagan administration, he served as ambassador to Honduras, at
a time when that country was serving as a central logistical center for U.S.
support of the Contra war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. From
his base at the vastly expanded embassy in Tegucigalpa, Negroponte also played
a central role in the U.S. strategy to support counterinsurgency and anti-dissident
operations in Honduras as well as in the neighboring countries of El Salvador
and Guatemala. During his tenure, the U.S. military base in Palmerola, Honduras
became a key logistical center for U.S. military, CIA, and civic military operations
throughout the isthmus.
At the Cold War’s end, when NAFTA and free trade initiatives had become
the major thrust of U.S. post-Cold War policy, Negroponte was appointed by
President George H.W. Bush as ambassador to Mexico. Under Clinton, Negroponte
became ambassador to Philippines, just as that country was undergoing a contentious
democratic transition and the presence of the U.S. military in the former U.S.
dependency was being negotiated.
In the late 1990s, Negroponte joined the private sector as an executive with
McGraw-Hill. Like several other Reagan-era officials involved in Contra support
operations in Central America, including illegal and highly unethical activities,
the government career of Negroponte was resurrected by President Bush, who
welcomed such unsavory figures as Elliott
Abrams, John Poindexter, John
Walters, and Otto
Reich back into the executive branch.
As UN ambassador, Negroponte stage-managed the administration’s attempt
to persuade the Security Council to support the invasion of Iraq. In 2004 President
Bush named Negroponte as Washington’s first post-Saddam Hussein ambassador
to Iraq, where he supervised what became (after the invasion) the largest U.S.
embassy staff in the world, with more than 900 employees. While in Iraq, Negroponte
gave Washington optimistic reports about the country’s progress toward
democracy, and according to news reports he fiercely disagreed with the pessimistic
CIA reports on the insurgency and the prospects for peace.
Death Squads and Cover-Ups
Time and again, John Negroponte has demonstrated his willingness to use his
diplomatic status to cover up crimes and misdemeanors. These tendencies—including
his role in covering up the crimes of the Contras and the vigilantes of the
Honduran armed forces as well as his silence about gross human rights abuses
and corporate scandals in Iraq—are worrisome in light of his nomination
to become the first Director of National Intelligence.
The Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA) observed: Negroponte is the “right
man for the job but for the wrong reasons.” (7) While he was ambassador
to Honduras during the Reagan administration, he at the very least turned a
blind eye toward the illegal flow of arms and other U.S. governmental and nongovernmental
aid to the Nicaraguan Contras. Under his watch the Honduran military and associated
paramilitary squads committed a multitude of human rights abuses and executions.
After leaving Honduras, Negroponte became Deputy National Security Adviser
at the White House. Working together with Undersecretary of State for Latin
American Affairs Elliott Abrams, Negroponte succeeded in halting U.S. investigations
into Honduran military officials involved in drug trafficking. (8) (9)
Over the past two decades, Negroponte has repeatedly told the media and congressional
committees that it was a myth perpetrated by U.S. critics that death squads
operated in Honduras or that the government was guilty of gross human rights
abuses. A 1997 CIA Inspector General investigation concluded, however, that “the
Honduran military committed hundreds of human rights abuses since 1980, many
of which were politically motivated and officially sanctioned” and “linked
to death squads.” (22)
In a 1995 investigative report published by the Baltimore Sun, reporters
Gary Cohn and Ginger Thompson revealed how the CIA-trained Battalion 316 in
Honduras tortured its captives during interrogations, some of whom were killed
and buried afterwards in unmarked graves. A former Honduran congressman, Efrain
Diaz, told the Baltimore Sun of Negroponte and other U.S. officials: “Their
attitude was one of tolerance and silence. They needed Honduras to loan its
territory more than they were concerned about innocent people being killed.” Negroponte’s
predecessor as Honduras ambassador, Jack Binns, who was appointed by President
Jimmy Carter, said that when he left Honduras, he briefed Negroponte on the
escalating human rights abuses. (23)
For its close cooperation with the Reagan administration’s aggressive
foreign policy in Central America, the Honduran government was generously compensated
with a huge influx of military and economic aid. Military aid increased from
$4 million in 1980 to $77 million in 1984, while economic aid increased from
$52 million to $229 million. Had Negroponte informed Congress that the military
was engaged in human rights abuses, these aid flows would have been jeopardized.
No report of such abuses was allowed to interfere with the U.S. destabilization
of Nicaragua. When Negroponte was named UN ambassador, Reed Brody of Human
Rights Watch had this to say: “When Negroponte was ambassador [in Honduras]
he looked the other way when serious atrocities were committed. One would have
to wonder what kind of message the Bush administration is sending about human
rights.”
The fear and intense patriotism that followed the September 11 attacks likely
spared Negroponte from an intense grilling in his Senate confirmation hearings
for his UN ambassadorship, which had already stalled for several months due
to the Senate’s request for documents. At the UN he led the Bush administration
drive for war, and tried to persuade the Mexican and Chilean governments to
recall their UN ambassadors when they did not agree to support the planned
invasion. According to news reports, Negroponte authorized wire taps and other
audio surveillance of both allies and critics at the UN in the run-up to Security
Council vote and the invasion. (11) (12) (6) (16)
Tough Yes, But Independent?
Negroponte comes to the new position with many assets, including his wide
experience and his many accomplishments in implementing diverse U.S. foreign
and military policy strategies. There is, however, a major difference between
being an effective instrument of bad U.S. policy and providing good intelligence
for good policymaking.
Critics charge that Negroponte has—both as a member of the National
Security Council and during his various ambassadorships—covered up damaging
information so as to further bad policies. Melvin Goodman, a former CIA official,
warned: “Negroponte is tough enough. The question is: Is he independent
enough?” Referring to his history of covering up human rights abuses
in Honduras, Goodman said: “I think of the role of intelligence in telling
truth to power” and then Negroponte’s appointment “doesn’t
fit.” (24)
The potential power of the new intelligence czar will likely be determined
by how well he works with the inner circle of the foreign policy team. This
team—led by Vice President Cheney, DOD Secretary Rumsfeld, and Deputy
DOD Secretary Wolfowitz—dominated the national security, foreign policy,
and intelligence policies of the first Bush administration.
If Negroponte attempts to assert his independence, he may face strong opposition
that could undermine the potential power of the DNI’s office and weaken
his influence over and access to the president. In close collaboration with
its congressional allies, the Pentagon successfully blocked the original intelligence
reform bill that would have given the DNI complete control over the budgets
and personnel of military intelligence agencies. (25) (26)
One sign of the power of the new DNI office will be Negroponte’s ability
to assert control over the budgets and directors of the various intelligence
agencies, particularly those that reside within the Pentagon and the rump intelligence
operations created by Rumsfeld and associates.
But it will be his independence as an arbiter of good intelligence, not his
ability to assert power over the policy process, that will determine if Negroponte
is really a director of national intelligence—or instead just another
policy hack turning out daily intelligence briefings and national intelligence
estimates that serve predetermined policy agendas.
