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WASHINGTON - U.S. ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte, President Bush's surprise choice as America's first national intelligence director, will need all his diplomatic skills to avoid battles with the Pentagon and CIA over budgets and access to the president, experts said Thursday.
The selection was applauded by intelligence experts, who said Negroponte's skills as a manager and diplomat, and his close friendship with Bush, will be invaluable for coordinating the work of 15 intelligence agencies and dividing up the massive U.S. intelligence budget.
Intelligence experts said the budgetary role could bring Negroponte in direct conflict with Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld.
The Defense Department controls about 85 percent of the national intelligence budget, including key battlefield intelligence gathered by expensive satellite surveillance and other efforts. Rumsfeld has made it clear he believes the military needs more control over its own intelligence, not less.
Cannistraro said the new director might also have to repair relations with the CIA.
Concerns that Negroponte has never headed an intelligence gathering agency were somewhat mitigated by Bush's appointment of National Security Agency Director Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden as Negroponte's top deputy.
Hayden was on most Washington insider's short list for the top job. Negroponte was not.
But critics point to Negroponte's role in bloody conflicts 20 years ago in Honduras and Nicaragua as a blot on an otherwise remarkable career.
Some human rights groups claimed Negroponte, as ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s, looked the other way as death squads sought to suppress a left-wing insurgency.
Negroponte will have a pioneering role in defining a job that has not yet been precisely outlined by Congress or the White House. Bush cleared up some questions about the duties Thursday.
Negroponte will give the president his daily intelligence briefing without a White House office or Cabinet membership. He will act as a gate-keeper on the intelligence Bush receives and dispense the estimated $40 billion U.S. intelligence budget among agencies such as the Pentagon and CIA.
CIA director Porter Goss will report directly to Negroponte and will channel agency assessments of terrorism through him to the president.
Negroponte likely will face little opposition during confirmation hearings in the Senate. He was easily confirmed for the Iraq job; endorsements poured in from Democrats and Republicans Thursday.
The 9/11 Commission panelists who recommended creation of a national intelligence director and lobbied for it over Bush's initial reluctance were happy with the choice.
Co-chairs Thomas Kean, a Republican, and Lee Hamilton, a Democrat, issued a statement praising Bush's choice.
As ambassador to the United Nations, Negroponte joined Secretary of State Colin Powell to sell the world on the necessity to invade Iraq.
The government career of Negroponte, 65, dates back to the Vietnam War, when he served as a staffer for National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger during efforts to forge a peace. Later he encountered the controversy about Honduras by not admitting to any human rights violations there.
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