President Bush has named Ambassador John Negroponte to the new National Intelligence Director position. Negroponte currently serves as the American Ambassador to Iraq. Current NSA head Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden has been picked as his deputy.
I’m not personally familiar enough with Negroponte to make a judgement call on him, and Kathryn Jean Lopez seems to be cautious about Negroponte. He’s going to have a tough job just dealing with the various interagency turf wars that routinely go on. He’s going to have to seriously focus efforts on restoring our HUMINT capabilities, which will not be easy. Hopefully he’ll be up to the task.
