Posted on: Saturday, February 19, 2005

EDITORIAL
Will Bush's new 'czar' fill intelligence needs?

There are too many imponderables at work to guess whether veteran diplomat John Negroponte can improve the nation's intelligence-gathering effort.

Recall that President Bush initially tried to prevent the creation of the 9/11 commission, then opposed its recommendation for creation of an "intelligence czar," or national intelligence director.

Still, Bush offered powerful and welcome support for Negroponte this week: Negroponte, not CIA Director Porter Goss, will conduct daily intelligence briefings in the Oval Office, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will defer to Negroponte on matters of intelligence, the president said.

Given the huge task of coordinating 15 military and civilian agencies, making sure Negroponte's authority is clear offers a strong start.

Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq with 40 years of government experience, brings an impressive suite of skills, including years in the diplomatic corps, where he was an avid and knowledgeable "consumer" of intelligence and was known as a skilled bureaucratic "infighter."

And because the veteran diplomat is near the end of his public service career, he may be relatively free to tell the truth and make hard decisions without concerns about advancing his own career.

The acid test will be whether he can help prevent the CIA's dire assessment that al-Qaida is striving to strike the United States with weapons of mass destruction from coming to fruition.