WASHINGTON — Although his confirmation as the nation's first intelligence director is likely weeks away, John D. Negroponte's inbox is already full of thorny problems -- among them interagency squabbles and ethical questions over the handling of prisoners -- that he will be expected to resolve.
If confirmed by the Senate, Negroponte would be taking charge of the U.S. intelligence community at a time when the aggressive methods it has embraced since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks are under growing scrutiny. As a result, the community's flagship agency -- the CIA -- is growing increasingly uncomfortable in its role as jailer and interrogator of high-ranking terrorism suspects.
Negroponte also would be stepping into a raging debate over how billions of dollars in spy agency budgets are being spent.
In particular, he may be thrust into the role of refereeing a dispute between powerful lawmakers and the Pentagon over a costly spy satellite program that influential senators would like to kill.
Negroponte, currently U.S. ambassador to Iraq, is likely as well to need all of his diplomatic skills to handle emerging boundary disputes between the CIA, the FBI and the Pentagon as the latter two agencies expand their intelligence collection operations.
These are just some of the nettlesome issues he would confront in the moments when he was not overwhelmed by his principal responsibility: overseeing the first major restructuring of the U.S. intelligence community in more than 50 years.
Negroponte is a "savvy, experienced diplomat who understands the real, harsh world in which intelligence operates," said James L. Pavitt, who retired last year as head of the CIA's clandestine service. But he added that Negroponte and Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who was nominated as deputy intelligence chief, "have got one hell of a job ahead of them."
Negroponte and Hayden, the head of the National Security Agency, were nominated Thursday by President Bush to fill new intelligence posts created last year by Congress to provide American spy agencies with central leadership. The aim is to end the confusion and lack of communication that contributed to failures surrounding the Sept. 11 attacks.
In interviews Friday, current and former intelligence officials applauded Bush's choices for the jobs, with one U.S. intelligence official saying the reaction he had seen among employees in the CIA was "uniformly positive." Several officials expressed relief that the nominations had gone to a diplomat and a longtime intelligence professional, after months of rumors that the positions might be awarded to political operatives.
