Negroponte Confirmed as Director of National Intelligence
By SCOTT SHANE

Published: April 22, 2005

WASHINGTON, April 21 - The Senate confirmed John D. Negroponte on Thursday as the country's first director of national intelligence, with key senators urging him to assert his power quickly over the nation's 15 spy agencies, improve their sharing of information and upgrade their intelligence collection on terrorism and other threats.

The 98-to-2 vote was a strong endorsement for Mr. Negroponte, a 65-year-old longtime diplomat, as he seeks to lead the intelligence agencies out of a period of intense criticism for their failure to prevent the 2001 terrorist attacks and their inaccurate reporting on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

The only no votes came from two Democratic senators, Tom Harkin of Iowa and Ron Wyden of Oregon. Mr. Wyden said he opposed confirmation because he believed that Mr. Negroponte had played down human rights abuses when he served as ambassador to Honduras in the 1980's and that Mr. Negroponte had given evasive answers to questions at his confirmation hearing on April 12.

Michael V. Hayden, director of the National Security Agency for the last six years, was confirmed as principal deputy director of national intelligence. The Senate also approved his promotion from an Air Force lieutenant general to full general.

Senator Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican who is chairman of the Intelligence Committee, praised Mr. Negroponte as the right man for a daunting job. "I am convinced that he has the character, he has the expertise and he has the leadership ability to successfully meet these challenges," Mr. Roberts said.

Noting that intelligence reform legislation signed by President Bush in December left "certain ambiguities" about the power of the new post, Mr. Roberts said it would be up to Mr. Negroponte to resolve them. Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the committee's ranking Democrat, said Mr. Negroponte would have to show that his job "supercedes" even that of the defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld.

"Reform of the intelligence community will involve stepping on the turf of some of the most powerful bureaucracies in Washington, first and foremost among them the Department of Defense," Mr. Rockefeller said.

President Bush, whose support will be critical to establishing Mr. Negroponte's standing, issued a statement congratulating him. "As the D.N.I., Ambassador Negroponte will lead a unified intelligence community as it reforms and adapts to the new challenges of the 21st century," Mr. Bush said.

The creation of the intelligence director's job, the most significant reorganization of the spy agencies since the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947, is intended to force better coordination of the competitive and secretive agencies.

For Mr. Negroponte, the job is the culmination of a four-decade career in government service that has included five ambassadorships, most recently in Iraq. As a diplomat he worked closely with C.I.A. officers abroad and was a consumer of reports from the C.I.A., the National Security Agency and other agencies.

Mr. Negroponte and General Hayden are to preside over a staff of more than 500 people. President Bush last Friday named John Russack, the Energy Department's intelligence chief, to one important job, that of program manager, in which he will oversee information-sharing by the intelligence agencies.

Though Mr. Roberts and Mr. Rockefeller both praised Mr. Negroponte and General Hayden, they clashed over Mr. Rockefeller's call for the committee to investigate the detention and interrogation practices of the intelligence agencies.

Mr. Rockefeller, who has sought such an investigation for three months, said the committee had "abdicated its responsibility to the media" by failing to pursue cases of abuse and death of detainees in American custody in Afghanistan and Iraq. Investigations to date have focused on the conduct of the military but not the C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies, he said.

Mr. Roberts strongly objected. "I am fast losing patience with what appears to me to be almost a pathological obsession with calling into question the brave men and women on the front lines of the war on terror," he said.