Preserving CIA Status Will Test New Chief

McLaughlin, who has helped Tenet make life-and-death decisions about operations during the daily 5 p.m. Counterterrorism Center meetings, is known as unflappable under stress, even though he is relatively new to the clandestine operations side of the agency.

Part of the agency's success in foreign counterterrorism operations has come from its newly robust relationship with foreign intelligence services. The CIA has lavished top-level attention and hundreds of millions of dollars in equipment and cash to win the foreign services' cooperation. Tenet was part of the campaign, and over the years, he developed close ties with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinians.

To pave the road for McLaughlin, who has met many of these same men, Tenet made a round of calls after his announced resignation Thursday, touting his confidence in McLaughlin, whom he described as his "alter ego," according to a senior intelligence official with knowledge of the calls.

Within the intelligence community, McLaughlin will also be responsible for continuing to strengthen the clandestine and analytical departments and to help facilitate the still-bumpy, but newly invigorated working relationship with the FBI. Unlike Tenet, who had trouble before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, persuading the White House and Congress to give the intelligence community more funds, McLaughlin's task will be to make sure the subsequent huge increases are spent effectively.

And at a time of unprecedented recruiting for new CIA case officers and analysts, McLaughlin will be expected to defend the agency's reputation and morale during the coming onslaught of criticism from two congressional reports and the Sept. 11 commission. "He will have to go down and defend it," the former senior intelligence official said. "John is so nice, I worry about him. You've got to be able to push back, make people unhappy. He needs a sharper edge."

At the heart of Tenet's power was his relationship with Bush, who cottoned immediately to the CIA director and his charismatic personality.

McLaughlin -- with his calm, controlled style -- has a professional and somewhat more conventional relationship with Bush. According to White House records, Bush had never uttered McLaughlin's name in public until he announced him as Tenet's successor Thursday morning .

A senior administration official who has attended classified briefings with both Tenet and McLaughlin said the stylistic differences will mean a different morning experience for Bush, who sees the CIA director after Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr.

The change may be jarring in such a stressful period. "Tenet is ethnic, charming, a hail fellow well met," said a senior administration official. "This guy is inward, self-contained, analytical."

But this official pointed out that Bush has developed bonds with aides whose style is very different from his own, citing the academic mien of his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and the scholarly reserve of his chief speechwriter, Michael Gerson.

"The president may have less fun, but that doesn't mean he can't develop a different but prosperous relationship," the official said.

McLaughlin has spent considerable time with Bush discussing operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and often briefs the president when Tenet is out of town.

Other former intelligence officials who have worked with McLaughlin said he will carve out his own place within the administration, and it will be as valuable as Tenet's. "John has a seductive quality in his relationship with other people," said Winston P. Wiley, former chief of the CIA's counterterrorism center and deputy director of intelligence. "In some ways it's equally compelling," but different from Tenet's charisma.

"He's more cerebral, it's easier for him to listen," Wiley added. "He's a performing magician, which takes a lot of discipline, and he knows how to read crowds."

In wondering last week whether McLaughlin will maintain Tenet's influential relationship with the White House, former and current intelligence officials lamented the days when then-CIA Director R. James Woolsey was able to wrangle only two semi-private meetings with President Bill Clinton during his two-year tenure.

When a Cessna airplane crashed into the South Lawn in 1994, White House staff members joked that it must be Woolsey trying to get an appointment.

The story has been retold countless times since Tenet announced his resignation Thursday.

Staff writer Walter Pincus contributed to this report.