California Conservative

The NY Times is reporting that John Negroponte is returning to the State Department as Condi Rice’s second in command.

John D. Negroponte, whom President Bush installed less than two years ago as the first director of national intelligence, will soon leave his post to become the State Department’s second-ranking official, administration officials said Wednesday.

This will be an interesting test for the new incoming Democratic majority. I predict that they’ll take his confirmation hearings as an opportunity to grill President Bush’s foreign policies, especially in Iraq and President Bush’s NSA intercept program. It sounds like they’ve got a replacement picked to replace Negroponte as DNI:

Administration officials from two different agencies said Wednesday that the leading candidate to become the new intelligence chief is J. Michael McConnell, a retired vice admiral who led the National Security Agency from 1992 to 1996. Admiral McConnell was head of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Gen. Colin L. Powell during the first Persian Gulf war, in 1991.

In other words, Adm. McConnell sounds ideally suited for the DNI job. Unfortunately, that won’t stop Democrats for whining about this appointment. I’ll keep you posted on Adm. McConnell’s chances of winning confirmation.

UPDATE: The AP’s Katherine Shrader is confirming that Vice Adm. Mike McConnell will be named by President Bush as his nominee to be the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to replace John Negroponte, who is moving to the State Department to be Condoleezza Rice’s second in command. Here’s what Ms. Shrader is reporting:

The administration sought to dispel any suggestion that Negroponte’s shift was a demotion. Bush personally reached out to Negroponte, an experienced diplomat, to take over the long-vacant job as deputy secretary of state, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because Bush has not announced the nomination.
Bush also talked personally with McConnell about taking the job as director of national intelligence, overseeing all 16 U.S. spy agencies.
Under Donald Rumsfeld’s reign at the Defense Department, there were rivalries and friction between the Pentagon and the intelligence community. Robert Gates, who took over last month as secretary of defense, supports McConnell’s nomination to the top intelligence post, the official said.

Technorati Tags: Negroponte, Condoleezza Rice, Director National Intelligence, Confirmation Hearings

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 4th, 2007 at 7:45 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Foreign Policy, Intel, Terrorism, W. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.