Negroponte's Battle for Authority

One test for Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte in his first year in office was how, as President Bush's top intelligence adviser, he would meet challenges to his authority that came from Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.

In the months before and after April 2005, when Negroponte took over as DNI, questions have been raised as to whether Rumsfeld was moving ahead aggressively in the intelligence field, at home and abroad, while Negroponte stood aside, slowly pulling together his team.

Congress, in the 2004 law creating Negroponte's office, gave him authority over almost 70 percent of about $40 billion of intelligence funds spent this year by Pentagon agencies, such as the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

And it specifically gave the DNI authority -- over Pentagon objections -- to select up to 100 intelligence specialists, no matter where they worked, and transfer them to other positions.

At last week's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who led the committee that drafted the law restructuring the intelligence community, asked Negroponte whether a recent Defense Department directive placing authority over the Pentagon intelligence activities with Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen A. Cambone created any "concerns" that the DNI's authority was being subverted.

Negroponte responded that he had worked with Cambone on the directive for three months, that there was "constant dialogue," and that every change he suggested was accepted.

But then, for a brief moment, Negroponte suggested that there may have been a bit of conflict, after all:

"One area that we're working on now -- and I don't mean to invite help, because I think we'll work our way through it quite well -- is the area of personnel. And what you have there are intelligence-community personnel who are also in a Cabinet-level department. And we look at those people as intelligence people, and the secretary [Rumsfeld] certainly looks upon those as DOD folks."

It was not lost on Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) that Negroponte prefaced his remarks with "I don't mean to invite help."

Lieberman, who with Collins pushed the intelligence legislation through the Senate, turned to Negroponte's deputy, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who has been known to have clashed with Rumsfeld: "General Hayden, I know you weren't asking for help," he said, "but you know we are from the federal government and we are -- [laughter] -- here to help."

-- Walter Pincus