Free Republic

Valerie Plame should be the next Director of Central Intelligence, not Gen. Mike Hayden. Now that the CIA's Praetorian Guard has -- with the connivance of National Intelligence Director John Negroponte -- rid itself of Porter Goss, the CIA is confidently preparing to march back into the intelligence dark ages that preceded 9/11. Gen. Hayden -- former head of the National Intelligence Agency and most famous for his strong defense of the NSA terrorist surveillance program -- is slated to be nominated for the DCI post today. Hayden, now Negroponte's deputy and choice for DCI, will face tough questioning in...

...A new National Intelligence Director with a staff of several hundred will ride herd over the CIA, the DIA, the NSA, the FBI and the Pentagon.... ...[I]f this "reform" passes, a President might no longer get the competing views from the Pentagon because its intelligence arms will have been wrested away from the Defense Secretary to report to the same new national director. Such a move... runs the risk of separating intelligence from the war fighters who need it. One genuine success of recent years has been the integration of real-time intelligence with commanders on the battlefield.... The intelligence changes......

Chas Freeman was not the only questionable selection by Intelligence Chief Dennis Blair. Newsweek is reporting problems with another pick another Blair pick: John Deutch. Deutch is a former head of the CIA who was a bit sloppy with our nations secrets : Add president Obama's national intelligence czar, Dennis Blair, to the list of embattled top-level appointees. Blair, a retired four-star Navy admiral who attended Oxford with Bill Clinton, courted controversy among pro-Israel and anti-China activists this month when he named Charles (Chas) Freeman, an outspoken former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, to chair the National Intelligence Council, a committee...

WASHINGTON - A turf war between the two senior intelligence chiefs over the role of CIA station chiefs in U.S. embassies has forced National Security Adviser James L. Jones to step in to mediate, according to current and former U.S. government officials. The jockeying between CIA director Leon Panetta and National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair centers on Blair's effort to choose his own representatives abroad instead of relying only on CIA station chiefs, the current and former officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the dispute.

Resolution 1-02 To Address the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s Debate on Homosexuality and the Ministry Whereas, The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) will meet in General Assembly in August, 2009 to debate the “Report and Recommendation on Ministry Policies” and Whereas, By the passage of the “Report and Recommendation on Ministry Policies” the ELCA would commit itself to find ways to “recognize, support and hold publicly accountable life-long, monogamous same gender relationships,” and would commit itself to find a way for “people in publicly accountable, life-long monogamous same gender relationships to serve as rostered leaders of this church”,...

U.S. intelligence czar not a new idea Based on what I’m seeing in the newspapers, hearing on radio call-in shows, and even reading among the flood of email messages received over the past week; many Americans believe the naming of Ambassador John Negroponte to the post of Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden as deputy DNI is a brand new idea. As we all know, the DNI is responsible for overseeing the 15-member U.S. Intelligence Community. It’s a responsibility formerly held by the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (Director of Central Intelligence or...

UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL The chairman and vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence yesterday welcomed the nomination of John D. Negroponte as the nation's intelligence chief and highlighted the critical role that his deputy is expected to play. "Both Jay and I think that the appointment of Ambassador John Negroponte and, more especially, the appointment of his deputy, Lieutenant General Michael Hayden ... represent an excellent team," said Sen. Pat Roberts, Kansas Republican and committee chairman, who appeared on "Fox News Sunday" with Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, West Virginia Democrat.

PRESIDENT Bush just made a very promising choice for our first national intelligence director: Ambassador John Negroponte. Thinking creatively, Bush picked someone who has had to rely upon intelligence, rather than an insider who can't see beyond the system's self-satisfied, mammoth bureaucracy. Normally, a diplomat would be a terrible choice to drive intel reform. Too many diplos just don't have the punch to make things happen. Negroponte's different. He's a hitter. With experience in Honduras during Central America's years of crisis, as well as in Mexico, the Philippines, the United Nations and now Iraq, this guy knows what it means...

Per ABC News Special Report

WASHINGTON — President Bush announced Thursday that he picked John Negroponte, the current U.S. ambassador to Iraq, to be the nation's first national intelligence director (search). National Security Agency head Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden (search) will be Negroponte's deputy. The new official will oversee 15 separate intelligence agencies, including the CIA, a responsibility the president called "straightforward and demanding." "John will make sure that those whose duty it is to defend America have the information they need to make the right decisions," the president said in making the announcement, adding that after spending his life in foreign service, Negroponte understands...

...Crowning all of this will be the office of the National Intelligence Director. In theory, the job of the NID... will... oversee and coordinate the work of the CIA, FBI, NSA and DIA. In practice, it probably means one of the following two things: 1) NID becomes another layer of the permanent Washington bureaucracy.... Eventually it is co-opted by one of them, probably the CIA, which provides the NID with most of his personnel. Or (2) NID becomes another layer of the permanent Washington bureaucracy. The office accretes staff and influence. It interposes itself between the President and his intelligence-gatherers....

...After intense work, Sens. Joe Lieberman, John McCain and Susan Collins have introduced comprehensive legislation that differs on only a few matters with the Commission recommendations. The Senate leadership has pursued the same bipartisan course that enabled the Commission's five Democrats and five Republicans to achieve unanimity on comprehensive and decisive findings and reform recommendations. The House is following suit with somewhat different legislation and there is no reason now why differences cannot be resolved in a Senate-House Conference and a landmark bill presented to the president before the election recess. This accomplishment, to paraphrase Mark Twain, will gratify our...