Bush Taps Ex-NSA Chief For Top Spy Post
Mike McConnell Chosen To Be National Intelligence Director
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Play CBS Video Video National Security Team Changes CBS News RAW: President Bush chose Mike McConnell to be his national intelligence director. McConnell replaces John Negroponte, who was nominated as deputy secretary of state.
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President Bush, center, shakes hands with John Negroponte as he announces Negroponte's nomination for Deputy Secretary of State, Friday, Jan. 5, 2007 in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington. At right is Mike McConnell, the president's nominee to replace Negroponte as National Intelligence Director. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
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Mike McConnell, President Bush's nominee for National Intelligence Director, second from right, makes remarks as he is introduced in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Friday, Jan. 5, 2007. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
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Interactive 21st Century Spying The biggest overhaul of the U.S. intelligence community in half a century.
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The administration denied that Negroponte's move was a demotion. The senior administration official said Mr. Bush personally reached out to Negroponte to fill the opening for deputy secretary of state, which has been vacant since July. Mr. Bush also talked with McConnell about becoming intelligence chief, a position that oversees and coordinates the 16 U.S. spy agencies.
McConnell spent more than a quarter-century as an intelligence operations and security officer and caught the attention of then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and then-Joint Chiefs Chairman Colin Powell during the first Persian Gulf War. He regularly briefed the two as an intelligence officer for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and is known as someone who can distill complicated information into coherent presentations, said Matthew Aid, a historian who studies the National Security Agency.
McConnell was tapped to lead U.S. eavesdropping efforts as director of the National Security Agency from 1992 to 1996. Aid suggested his record there was mixed. McConnell allowed Congress and the White House to slash NSA funding after the Cold War at a time when Aid said the government should instead have been ramping up for challenges posed by cell phones, the Internet and fiber-optic cable.
Yet, on McConnell's watch, the agency also became central to providing intelligence on the war in Bosnia, shipments of weapons-grade technology to Iraq and other tough issues of that era.
McConnell left the government and has worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, a government contractor and consulting firm, for about a decade.
Negroponte has been a diplomat in spy's clothing since he became the nation's first intelligence chief in April 2005, more comfortable in ambassadorial circles than the cloak-and-dagger world.
As Rice's deputy, he no longer would have first chair for a major government department or oversight of a $40 billion budget. But associates said the job of creating a new organization from scratch has had plenty of frustrations, from securing office space to planning foreign travel.
Negroponte has been at the center of Mr. Bush's Iraq strategy. He was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations when Secretary of State Powell made his now-infamous, error-filled presentation there in arguing for the invasion of Iraq. Negroponte became the U.S. ambassador to Iraq in June 2004, and was there for the January 2005 elections that Sunni Muslims boycotted.
Soon after, the White House asked him to take a job that others had already turned down because Congress didn't give the position enough power: national intelligence director.
Some doubted the wisdom of creating such a slot, worried it would only further weigh down an unwieldy bureaucracy. Negroponte leaves as the success or failure of that endeavor remains an open question.
Senate Intelligence Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., whose panel must approve McConnell's nomination, said he was troubled by the timing of Negroponte's departure because it leaves a void while his organization is still in its infancy.
Rockefeller and the committee's top Republican, Kit Bond of Missouri, both said that a new intelligence chief must be in place before Negroponte leaves. "A premature departure creates an unneeded vacuum within the DNI office at a critical time," Bond said.
© MMVII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
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See all 26 CommentsAnd misleading our country into war
Abusing all the power that we gave him
And shipping all our money out the door
Who's the man who hired all the criminals
The White House shadows who hide behind closed doors
They bend the facts to fit with their new stories
Of why we have to send our men to war
Let's impeach the President for spying
On citizens inside their own homes
Breaking every law in the country
By tapping our computers and telephones
What if Al Qaeda blew up the levees
Would New Orleans have been safer that way
Sheltered by our government's protection
Or was someone just not home that day?
Flip - Flop
Flip - Flop
Flip - Flop
Flip - Flop
Let's impeach the president for hijacking
Our religion and using it to get elected
Dividing our country into colors
And still leaving black people neglected
Thank god he's cracking down on steroids
Since he sold his old baseball team
There's lots of people looking at big trouble
But of course our president is clean."
~Mr. Neil Young
Here we go again,, The Great Decider makes his choice,,, As if any of his decisions have ever worked.
Posted by j-whitman at 05:04 PM : Jan 05, 2007
And so it goes.
The following is an intelligent quote that seem appropo for the occassion.
%u201CSerge, this boy is very intelligent, but I can't keep working with him.
He agrees with everything I say.%u201D
Luis Bunuel, the Director, to Jean-Claude Carriere
in his biog. By John Baxter, p.269
More shuffling of People. Who cares?
When is the Fascist Tyranny Corporate Controlled Government for the RICH going to STOP???
gasoline + styrofoam couple days = NAPALM
I suspect many Americans harbor great suspicion over the official report about 911 although many are reluctant or afraid to admit it, even to them selves.
Considering the almost too numerous to mention %u201Ccoincidences%u201D both before and after the fact can anyone truthfully say there is no possibility of complicity.
To name a few coincidences:
1. Quote from PNAC before 911; %u201CFurther, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event %u2014 like a new Pearl Harbor."
2. Bush administration planning Iraq invasion months before 911.
3. Delayed or nonexistent response to initial attacks on WTC.
4. No previous skyscraper building in history had ever collapsed in freefall except form strategically placed explosives, yet three such buildings did in the same incident on 911.
5. Congressional approval for the invasion of Iraq was gained through multiple incidences of false and or faulty information (Which did not convince the UN to go along).
6. The fear factor exploited to the fullest. i.e. mushroom cloud etc.
7.
I know this will bring out the usual cries of Conspiracy theory but I would like to see a truly independent investigation. This will probably never happen because too many people are afraid to learn what might really have happened.
In politics, one of the few things more dangerous than desperation is delusion. A person in a state of thinks that irrational is normal. They can see no fault in their action. To them, the basic principles of sound decision making (contextual appreciation, analysis, risk appraisal and evaluation of options are meaningless).
Next week, the President will present his "new way forward" for Iraq." This effort builds upon the "strategy for victory" in Iraq, which was published just last year. If like me you are wondering why we didnot have a strategy for victory in the beginning..... (coughs)
Presumably, the "new way forward" will also draw lessons from the recently published Iraq Study Group report - but don't hold your breath.
In truth, it will be a last throw of the dice for a President that has allowed his desperation over Iraq to become delusion. More troops will go to Iraq and more will surely die. Why? Because visibility equates to occupation. It won't work because it is "our" plan for Iraq not Iraqi's plan for itself.
The President's delusion is that he fails to recognise that he may be offering the Iraqi's something that they don't even want. And even if they did want it, they would have to get it for themselves. We cannot give it to them.
$45 for a 6-pack of Coke, for instance. And for the first time ever, outside contractors are handling things like laundry and catering which the military used to do themselves. And those are tiny examples.
If it were "blood for oil", God knows that would be bad enough. But "blood for money for crooks" is the real crime.
And yes, should you be in any doubt: I believe that this administration is more than happy for Americans to continue to die so that they can make money. We are under the control of genuinely evil people at this point in history, in my opinion.
I foresee the day when we'll phone in our votes to "Presidential Idol". That's about the intellectual level that "we the people" have reached.
hey, at least McConnell has an intelligence background. Give Bush a little credit (words I thought I'd never say); this beats nominating a former lottery supervisor for the supreme court, making a horse-breeder head of FEMA, or naming a former Seagrams exec to the number-two slot in the defense department.
What a complete tool Bush is, and what a corrupt joke in poor taste his incompetent and venal administration.
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