By Patricia H. Kushlis
The appointment of Ambassador John Negroponte, the Bush Administration’s fourth choice for the nation’s first intelligence czar (National Director of Intelligence), was announced with great fanfare on Thursday. The President finally found someone willing to take on what is likely to be one of the administration’s toughest positions over the next four years.
Did Negroponte take this difficult job because he sought a new challenge or because he wanted out of Iraq as some have speculated inside Foggy Bottom’s endless corridors? Perhaps both or neither. But it’s unlikely that he sought out this thankless position for personal publicity because that is not his style. And at 65 years old, one wonders if he still hungers for career advancement.
Many people greeted Negroponte’s appointment with enthusiasm, or at least relief that one of Bush’s neocons had not been named instead. They point to Negroponte’s lengthy professional diplomatic career during which he served as Ambassador at several large and difficult posts and well before that as a junior officer in 1960s Vietnam. They stress his strong management skills, demonstrated willingness to defend the administration’s policy line – regardless of administration or line - and no-nonsense approach to work.
As with almost every appointment, there are critics, and although Negroponte’s appointment is expected to slide like glass through the Senate confirmation process, it’s worth looking a little more closely at the man, his history, his critics and the potential pitfalls that come with this demanding new post.
Where to begin?
Negroponte is foremost a career diplomat who plays his cards close to his chest. He fits the profile of many successful State Department diplomats well: personally reserved, basically introverted, politically astute realists, well educated (Yale in Negroponte’s case), self-confident in their abilities and knowledge of foreign affairs, often ruthless (the Foreign Service promotion system reinforces this characteristic among already competitive people), but also careful people who take things one step at a time and approach their careers and assignments accordingly.
Career Foreign Service Officers are not global visionaries with goals to remake the world in anyone’s image. They take the world as it is and work within its confines. In this respect, they are the antithesis of the idealistic neoconservatives who dominated Bush’s first term. But among other qualities, Foreign Service Officers often excel at negotiations – and the U.S. negotiating process demands the ability to navigate across the vast domestic bureaucracy as well as negotiate with counterparts from abroad. Sometimes the latter is far easier than dealing with the complex, agonizingly slow, inter-agency negotiating process.
A Foreign Service Officer’s first goal is to keep the bosses happy. Challenging the powers that be that control one’s career path is not a wise idea. If, as a few reports suggest, that Negroponte challenged Kissinger’s handling of the South Vietnamese leadership during the Vietnam negotiations and left – or was asked to leave - the Peace Talks as a result, it would then have been even more difficult for Negroponte to confront neoconservative Eliot Abrams,’ Assistant Secretary for Latin American Affairs, view of the war in Nicaragua when he, Negroponte was Ambassador to Honduras (1981-85) – and still keep on the Ambassadorial track. For the record, Negroponte was not the only career Foreign Service Officer to have problems with Kissinger, others did as well.
Where Negroponte has excelled – in comparison with some others – is his administrative abilities. He has run several large embassies including Mexico, the Philippines (where I served as Cultural Affairs Officer from 1992-4), the United Nations and now Iraq. I think his administrative start began as Consul General in Thessaloniki, Greece during the early to mid 1970s, a gem of a small post during Cold War days – particularly for the son of a London-based Greek ship-owning family.
Although he was a Deputy Director of the National Security Council from 1987-89, Negroponte has, however, had relatively little high level administrative experience in the State Department except as Assistant Secretary of Oceans and Environment (1985-87). This in itself is somewhat unusual because State Department Foreign Service careers tend to be made in Washington, not overseas.
In the interests of transparency and disclosure, I did not know Negroponte well; the U.S. Embassy in Manila was huge, the Cultural Office was located an hour’s drive away, and our Philippine assignments overlapped by about nine months. But I did know him – and on occasion staged cultural events at the Ambassador’s Residence or was included in official parties he and Diana, his wife and the daughter of a Vice President of British Steel, hosted for Filipino educators, artists, politicians, the media or cultural figures. As Ambassador, he was also Honorary Chairman of PAEF, the U.S.-Philippines Bi-national Fulbright Commission Board of Directors, of which as CAO, I was the board member who dealt most with Commission operations on a daily basis.
Who are his critics and why?
When Negroponte was Ambassador to Honduras (1981-85), he was accused of being “soft on human rights abuses” in the Reagan Administration supported-war waged against the contras in next-door Nicaragua. The most thorough account of these charges and the surrounding circumstances that I’ve read are found in an unofficial biography of Ambassador Negroponte in Foreign Policy in Focus, a Silver City, New Mexico and Washington, D.C - based left-leaning foreign policy think tank with considerable experience in Central America and Mexico. Articles in other progressive publications – from the Nation to Tom Paine and the Asia Times – have been shriller in their criticisms and for the most part lacking the rich context that surrounded them.
In my view, however, accusations that Negroponte white-washed human rights abuse charges in the contra-war during the early 1980s will not cause him the most problems in the end. Yes, they will likely be raised in the Senate’s confirmation hearings, but as in previous hearings for his earlier assignments, they will be ignored or brushed aside as nothing new.
Ultimately, the question will be Negroponte’s ability to deal with the hawkish neocons in the Pentagon and Vice President Cheney’s office. Will he, as the President has promised, be able to retain the President’s ear and support? Will face-to-face time during the daily morning intelligence briefings he will give the President be enough to fend off challenges from those interested in maintaining their own intelligence turfs and budgets?
Or will these same Washington, media-savvy hawks outmaneuver him? I doubt that Porter Goss’ CIA will be the problem: Goss, in my view, is ineffectual and his blood-letting at the CIA has, it appears, to have only weakened, not strengthened the organization.
But the behemoth Pentagon is another story. Over 80% of the intelligence budget is controlled by these people and a coalition of neocons in the Pentagon policy shop working with uniformed military determined to fight a budgetary and control turf war will be formidable opponents. They will find allies in Vice President Cheney’s office, in the halls of Congress and probably among some at the NSC. The fights will be nasty and dirty. And Negroponte is no Scheherazade – he will not be able to charm them into submission.
There’s another factor here as well. The media. The neocons are masters at media manipulation. Through their right-wing think tanks they now provide around 80% of Washington’s talking political policy heads for the mainstream media. They are also masters at the well placed leak. So too are the uniformed military. Negroponte, in contrast, keeps a low media profile and throughout his career has given relatively few interviews.
If Negroponte has not already cultivated at least several well placed national level journalists, he needs to do so and soon, because this is how the Washington game is played. He will need them in his corner to explain his side of the story to the public and beyond when attacks begin. His interview on the PBS Evening Newshour the day after the Iraq elections was masterful – a careful, articulate description of the situation as it then stood. He needs to do more.
A savvy media advisor will help – but Negroponte needs to lift the veil and become far more accessible to the press than previously – on and off the record - in order to succeed in Washington’s hyper-charged environment.
The DNI is a position in the making. Negroponte will have the first crack. It’s important that he succeed.