Bush's New Intelligence Czar

After more than 40 years, serving under every President since Kennedy in such trouble spots as Vietnam, Honduras and Iraq, U.S. ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte, 65, is the consummate diplomat--discreet, deliberate and always careful choosing his words, whether in English, French, Greek, Spanish or Vietnamese. So a day after President Bush nominated him to be the nation's first Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Negroponte's brief exchange at a breakfast with the ambassadors representing the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council was telling. Asked by a diplomat whether he should "congratulate you or offer condolences on your nomination," Negroponte replied simply, with a dose of dry, self-deprecating wit that he doesn't often reveal, "Both."

Given the enormous responsibilities about to be thrust upon his shoulders and the less than clear powers he will have to carry them out, any ambivalence Negroponte might have about his promotion would be understandable. As the government's new intelligence czar and the President's primary intelligence adviser--a position created late last year by Congress after fierce lobbying by the 9/11 commission and families of the 9/11 victims--Negroponte has the job of making sure that the kinds of intelligence stumbles that led up to 9/11 and the sorts of miscalculations about Iraq's WMD programs don't happen again. Or, as Bush put it more delicately when announcing Negroponte's nomination, of ensuring "that our intelligence agencies work as a single, unified enterprise."

That is easier said than done. If confirmed by the Senate, Negroponte would oversee parts of 15 different agencies, including the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, agencies whose willingness to share closely guarded secrets is notoriously poor and whose suspicion of one another is strong. CIA Director Porter Goss and FBI Director Robert Mueller, for instance, still haven't worked out a lingering turf war over some aspects of human intelligence gathering, and the White House recently ordered that they get it done, sources tell TIME.

Bush went out of his way to say that Negroponte will deliver the President's daily intelligence briefing and will have ultimate authority over the nation's sprawling intel apparatus, including an estimated $40 billion annual budget. But considering how vague the legislation that established the DNI is, Negroponte's ability to actually do that is an open question. In fact, his position puts him smack in the middle of what could be the nastiest bureaucratic battle in Washington for years to come: a tussle over money with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, considered an almost unmatched infighter. Until now, Rumsfeld controlled roughly 80% of total intelligence spending, but now that control will have to be shared.