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New clandestine service has secret director named jose Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/12896441.htmhttp://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/12896441.htm
Posted on Thu, Oct. 13, 2005
Negroponte creates new clandestine service
BY STEPHEN J. HEDGES
Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON - (KRT) - National intelligence director John Negroponte on Thursday created the National Clandestine Service within the CIA to coordinate U.S. spying efforts overseas.
The change, one of the most significant restructurings of American spying since Congress created Negroponte's office last year, is intended to improve cooperation among the 15 U.S. spy agencies and streamline the flow of information to elected officials.
Under the plan, CIA Director Porter Goss will also become national human intelligence manager while the day-to-day operations of the clandestine service will be handled by an undercover officer. That officer publicly is referred to simply as "Jose."
The creation of the spy coordination unit and Goss' role in heading it are certain to boost morale at the Central Intelligence Agency, which came in for heavy criticism following intelligence failures prior to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the Iraq war. The CIA has lost a number of senior personnel since the arrival of Goss, a former Florida congressman and one-time CIA officer, who took over in September 2004.
"For the CIA, this is a big deal," said one senior intelligence official. "It's really a recognition of their expertise."
Intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the change would primarily affect the efforts of the CIA, FBI and Department of Defense intelligence units to recruit and run spies. The question was never whether the CIA would direct human intelligence gathering operations, they said, but how best to reorganize the efforts of the other agencies to make them compatible with what the CIA was already doing.
The lack of effective spies within terrorist cells was cited as a critical lapse in reviews following the Sept. 11 attacks. Several studies, including one by the independent 9-11 Commission, recommended naming a director of national intelligence and reorganizing the network of U.S. spy agencies.
President Bush and Congress endorsed most of the recommended changes and Bush named Negroponte, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq, as the first intelligence director.
Negroponte's creation of the clandestine service drew praise from the two leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
"Director Negroponte has made the right decision to designate the director of the CIA as the national human intelligence manager," Sen. John Rockefeller of West Virginia, the committee's ranking Democrat, said in a statement. "This decision reaffirms the agency's status as the nation's premier human intelligence organization and gives the director of the CIA the tools he needs to ensure an effective and coordinated effort."
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., the committee's chairman, also applauded the change, but registered some reservations.
"I am pleased to see that (Negroponte) and the various intelligence agencies have reached a negotiated settlement on who will manage and coordinate one of the nation's most important sources of intelligence," he said, but added, "I have a number of questions in regards to this latest reorganization."
Roberts said he would raise those concerns when Goss appears before the committee to explain the new clandestine service in a few weeks.
Under the plan, the overall goals for those intelligence efforts will be spelled out by Negroponte. But his office's involvement, the officials said, would be limited to setting the intelligence agenda, not directing tactical spy operations.
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© 2005, Chicago Tribune.
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