WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush named John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, as the government’s first national intelligence director Thursday, turning to a veteran diplomat to revive a spy community besieged by criticism after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Ending a nine-week search, Bush chose Negroponte, who has been in Iraq for less than a year, for the difficult job of implementing the most sweeping intelligence overhaul in 50 years.

Negroponte, 65, is tasked with bringing together 15 highly competitive spy agencies and learning to work with the combative Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, the brand new CIA Director Porter Goss and other intelligence leaders. He’ll oversee a covert intelligence budget estimated at $40 billion.

Negroponte, a former ambassador to the United Nations and to a number of countries, called the job his “most challenging assignment” in more than 40 years of government work.

His U.N. nomination was held up for half a year in 2001 over criticism regarding his record as ambassador in Honduras from 1981 to 1985, the time of the Iran-Contra scandal.

He was widely believed not to have been Bush’s first choice for the new job, but officials denied the president had had trouble filling the position.
Full Article: guardian.co.uk

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