IN THE NEWS
One of the funniest episodes of The West Wing concerns, of all things, a US submarine that may be lost in North Korean waters. The humor started when fictional Chief of Staff Leo McGarry convinces fictional President Jed Bartlett that they need expert advice from the national security community to handle this dangerous situation. The man they summon to the White House, Assistant Secretary of State Albie Duncan (played wonderfully by Hal Holbrook), is an intimidating presence already, a seasoned veteran of dozens of crises successfully handled under several other Administrations. Bartlett is already afraid that Duncan will quickly overshadow the nominal commander-in-chief. A few of the funnier moments include Bartlett banging his head on his desk while Duncan relates war stories from past crises; Duncan blurting out, “You lost your boat in the wrong part of the world, there, Mr. President;” and Bartlett telling his aide, “Charlie, could you have someone bring some Schweppes' Bitter Lemon and the Constitutional order of Succession, please? "
Even fictional presidents in fictional Administrations worry
about losing control when the experts enter the room. Of course, that’s one of
the skills needed by anyone in a managerial position, from the head of a team
of phone company repairmen to the person in the Oval Office. You need to rely
on the experts, but not so far that you let their disagreements,
overconfidence, or hobby horses drive decisions in a bad direction.
However, the Bush Administration has the greatest distaste
for expertise of any Administration I’ve ever seen. You might think that,
having won the 2004 election, with both houses of Congress in Republican hands,
Bush has a lot less to fear about losing control over particular bureaucracies
or policy issues than he did in his first term. He might then appoint some
leading lights to important cabinet positions, particularly in national
security areas, where the principle, “Politics ends at the shores of the United States,”
should operate to some significant degree. No matter who these people are, you
can pretty much assume their loyalty, no matter how obnoxiously Albie
Duncan-ish they may be.
Unfortunately, Bush continues to appoint people who are
loyalists, not leading lights. Clearly, there were better candidates for
top-level posts than Rice, Gonzales, and Goss. Unquestionably, there are better
people to appoint to slots one or two levels below these, instead of recycled
figures from the Iran-contra scandals like Abrams and Poindexter. It’s a big
country, with lots of Albie Duncans out there who would gladly serve their
country, even if they disagree with the current Administration’s policies. As
the received wisdom about Colin Powell says, the weight of being the only sane
person in the room can crush you, but you still might stay.
Yesterday, in the latest manifestation of this odd
insecurity about appointees, Bush nominated John Negroponte to be the first
National Intelligence Director, the position Bush reluctantly created on the
advice of the 9/11 Committee.
Negroponte is by no means a stupid man, and he does have an
impressive resume as a public servant. However, he is also another figure from
the Reagan Administration with a checkered past. Negroponte was ambassador to Honduras at the
time when the Honduran military and paramilitary forces were jailing,
torturing, and executing political opponents.
Honduras was also the main base of operations for the contras, the US-backed guerrillas
fighting the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. Aside from being not
terribly effective as an insurgency, the contras were accused of drug
trafficking, atrocities, and misuse of the funds the US government gave them.
It may be that events in Honduras spiraled out of control to
the point where any ambassador couldn’t make it all stop. However, what made
Negroponte lose any benefit of the doubt was his absurd claim that, during his
ambassadorial tenure, he had no knowledge of significant human rights abuses
committed by the Honduran government and army.
During Bush’s first term, Negroponte was UN ambassador. Of
course, that makes him part of the deceitful campaign to “sell” the Iraq war to the world and the US public. If
he were an experienced national security professional, he either failed to see
the obvious defects of the Administration’s threadbare case, or he decided not
to resign in protest. Perhaps he made his views known in private, but in
hindsight, it’s clear that any internal critics of the Iraq invasion
and occupation plan needed to have done more.
Negroponte, to his credit, took one of the most thankless
jobs, ambassador to Iraq.
Since he has not been in the job for very long, it’s hard to gauge his
performance. Again, events may be so out of control that it’s difficult for the
ambassador to take charge in the way some might expect or hope. Most chains of
command in Iraq don’t run
through the ambassador’s office, so Negroponte would have to rely on informal
channels to sway the US military, the chief player in Iraq.
This type of situation is where Negroponte does have some skill, as a 40 year
veteran of the foreign service.
Which leads, then, to the question of what sort of National
Intelligence Director he will be. Negroponte has a reputation for being “plain
spoken” in private, but as the Honduras and UN cases suggest, it’s not clear what sort of impact any pungent criticisms
may have had. Certainly, the new Director needs to have some skill as a hatchet
man to bring the different intelligence agencies to heel. He faces a similar
challenge dealing with bureaucracies outside his jurisdiction, like the
Department of Defense and the Department of Justice. Here is where his reported
strengths are likely to have the most impact, in the fierce bureaucratic
politics of the executive branch.
He does not, however, need to go after CIA analysts and
field agents with a meat cleaver, the way the dominant narrative about recent
intelligence failures suggest. The popular mantra, “Why didn’t the CIA warn
anyone about the 9/11 attacks, or the likely outcome of the WMD hunt in Iraq?” rings
hollow when you remember that dedicated professionals in the CIA, State
Department, DIA, and other agencies did provide these warnings. The now-famous
“Bin Laden Determined to Strike Within the United States” PDB, the State Department’s
accurate prediction of post-invasion Iraq—these and other examples show that
Negroponte should be building alliances with the people responsible for these
estimates, instead of contributing to the continued tarring and feathering of
the rank-and-file who, no matter how is National Intelligence Director, will
continue doing the actual intelligence work.
At the end of the day, though, the question remains: Why
Negroponte? Maybe he has some Albie Duncan-ish qualities, but so do a lot of
other possible candidates. When the Administration picks you over them because
of your loyalty, that tells you something about its willingness to hear
unvarnished truths, or grant you the latitude to steer the national
intelligence effort in the direction you see that it needs to go.
Jon Stewart once joked about another Administration official
(Rumsfeld, if I remember correctly), that his ability to survive mistakes
reminded him of how “stand-up guys” in the Mafia endure. To paraphrase Stewart,
since I don’t have a transcript handy, “With these guys, once you’re a made
man, you’re in for life.”
Which begs the question yet again: When will the
Administration be confident enough to appoint an Albie Duncan, whose loyalty
should be assumed, and not another stand-up guy?
