William O Studeman

President Clinton elevated the No. 2 official at the Central Intelligence Agency to the post of acting director Thursday as he continued to search for a permanent head of the organization. Adm. William O. Studeman, who has been deputy director of Central Intelligence for three years, will step in for R. James Woolsey, who is leaving the post as director Monday. Studeman is one of several candidates mentioned as a possible permanent replacement for Woolsey.

President Clinton elevated the No. 2 official at the Central Intelligence Agency to the post of acting director Thursday as he continued to search for a permanent head of the organization. Adm. William O. Studeman, who has been deputy director of Central Intelligence for three years, will step in for R. James Woolsey, who is leaving the post as director Monday. Studeman is one of several candidates mentioned as a possible permanent replacement for Woolsey.

President Bush will nominate Navy Vice Adm. William O. Studeman as deputy director of the CIA, the White House announced Friday. Studeman heads the National Security Agency in Ft. Meade, Md. He would succeed Richard J. Kerr, who announced his resignation earlier this week.

Hugh E. (Ted) Price is retiring as the CIA's director for operations effective Friday, the CIA announced Tuesday. Acting Director William O. Studeman said Price has made "significant contributions to the national security of this country." Price served in the post, which involves directing all of the agency's covert activities, since January, 1994. John J. Devine, associate deputy for operations since October, 1994, will serve as acting director of operations until a replacement is named.

President Reagan has nominated the admiral in charge of Navy intelligence operations to become the next director of the super-secret National Security Agency, the Pentagon announced Thursday. If confirmed by the Senate, Rear Adm. William O. Studeman will be promoted to vice admiral and replace Army Lt. Gen. William E. Odom, who is retiring on Aug. 1. Studeman, 48, a native of Brownsville, Tex., has been director of naval intelligence since September, 1985.

President Bush on Thursday named the final two members of the commission that will investigate prewar intelligence on Iraq, adding the president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a former Pentagon official. Charles M. Vest has been MIT's president since 1990. Henry S. Rowen, a professor emeritus at Stanford University, was an assistant defense secretary from 1989 to 1991 and a deputy assistant defense secretary from 1961 to 1964.

Without a ripple of dissent, the Senate voted Tuesday to install John M. Deutch as the new CIA director. By a count of 98 to 0, the Senate handed Deutch the job he initially turned down after President Clinton's first CIA director, R. James Woolsey, resigned in January. Deutch is to be sworn in as the 17th director of the CIA today. Adm. William O. Studeman, who has been acting director since Woolsey left, will revert to being deputy director. It is not clear how long Studeman will stay.

The odor from Wednesday's Senate hearing on the CIA's handling of two murders in Guatemala is not pleasant. Coming after the Aldrich Ames spy scandal, in which agency brass who botched the case of that Soviet mole escaped without serious penalty, the Guatemala matter suggests this tarnished agency needs a thorough overhaul. Its acting director, Adm. William O. Studeman, admitted serious errors in the case, in which a Guatemalan army colonel on the CIA payroll appears to have been involved.

The CIA is probing whether disclosures by Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez (D-Tex.) regarding U.S. help for Iraq before last year's war have damaged intelligence sources, but the lawmaker countered Friday that he simply hit a raw nerve in the Bush Administration. "The embarrassment to the Administration is growing, and so is the harassment they are subjecting me to," Gonzalez said in the latest of a months-long series of speeches on U.S. policy toward Iraq.

The new national intelligence director, John D. Negroponte, is not yet heeding a top recommendation of the Sept. 11 Commission to tear down barriers that divided U.S. spy agencies, one of the panel's Republican commissioners said Monday. As part of a panel discussion about the progress of intelligence changes, former Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr. said Negroponte has two other full-time jobs: serving as the president's chief intelligence advisor and managing the 15 U.S. intelligence agencies.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on Wednesday unanimously endorsed President Clinton's nomination of Deputy Defense Secretary John M. Deutch to be the next director of central intelligence, giving him a strong bipartisan mandate to enact what he has promised will be top-to-bottom reforms at the demoralized spy agency. Meeting behind closed doors, the committee voted, 17 to 0, to recommend Deutch's nomination to the full Senate.