WASHINGTON — The abrupt departure of John D. Negroponte as the nation's spy chief prompted angry responses from Capitol Hill and triggered new debate Thursday over whether a position created to fix the nation's intelligence problems is itself fundamentally flawed.
President Bush is expected to announce today that Negroponte will become the top deputy at the State Department. Bush also is set to nominate retired Navy Vice Adm. J. Michael McConnell to be the next director of national intelligence.
The shuffle comes 18 months into Negroponte's tenure at the job. And though he has received mixed reviews for his reform efforts, lawmakers and senior intelligence officials said the switch was a significant setback for the office, which oversees the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA.
"I'm very concerned that taking out the top guy at a critical juncture is going to cause some backsliding," said Rep. Jane Harman of Venice, who was the senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee when Congress passed the legislation creating the post of director of national intelligence. "It's a very steep learning curve. And any new person will have to play catch-up."
Negroponte's departure is the second major exit from the office of the directorate in a matter of months. His top deputy, Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden, left in the spring to become CIA director. When Negroponte and Hayden were nominated for the intelligence posts in 2005, they were described as a team whose skills and expertise were indispensable to the success of establishing the new agency and enacting sweeping intelligence changes passed in 2004 by Congress.
"I'm disappointed that both he and Hayden have left," said Lee H. Hamilton, a member of the Sept. 11 commission, which designated the creation of a intelligence director one of its principal recommendations.
"I think we are beginning to see better sharing of information in the intelligence community, and I also think it's a work in progress and an awful lot needs to be done," Hamilton said. "It is therefore a little unsettling to me that your two top leaders move out of the DNI office within a matter of months." The deputy job held by Hayden remains unfilled.
In another of a series of moves among top foreign policy posts, officials said Bush was likely to nominate Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. Khalilzad would replace John R. Bolton, who resigned last month after serving 16 months as a Bush appointee but not winning Senate confirmation to remain in the job.
