Intelligence chief picks 4 top deputies

The United States’ first director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, has appointed four deputies from within the intelligence and foreign policy bureaucracy, drawing fire from reform advocates.

Mr. Negroponte picked two career CIA operations officers, a State Department intelligence analyst and a career foreign service officer as the new agency’s first deputies, a senior intelligence official said yesterday.

“The sweet spot in all this is that we now have senior people whose sole job is the smooth functioning of the intelligence community,” said the official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity.

Several defense and intelligence officials privately voiced concern about the selections, saying they do not include people willing to push ahead with intelligence reforms in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks and intelligence failures related to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.

“All these appointees share a common outlook — opposition to both the WMD commission and 9/11 reforms,” said a defense official. “Not a single outsider has been brought in. It’s tragic.”

According to senior intelligence officials, the appointees are:

cState Department intelligence director Thomas Fingar, a China specialist, who will become the new deputy DNI for analysis. He will oversee all U.S. intelligence analysis and reports.

• A CIA operations directorate official currently at the White House National Security Council staff, David Shedd, who will become the chief of staff to Mr. Negroponte, the officials said. Mr. Shedd worked with Mr. Negroponte and was involved in Latin American covert operations in the 1980s.

• Another CIA directorate official, Mary Margaret Graham, will become the deputy DNI for collection, the top post in charge of managing all human and technical spying activities.

• Ambassador Patrick Kennedy, the Foreign Service officer, was selected as deputy DNI for management.

“As we are setting up the new office of the director of national intelligence (DNI), we are spending a lot of time searching for good people, and it is imperative we get the right people for these jobs,” Mr. Negroponte said in a statement.

The DNI office was created under intelligence reform legislation designed to better coordinate activities of the 15 agencies and departments that make up the U.S. intelligence community.

Its analysis branch will be in charge of producing the president’s daily intelligence digest, as well as taking over the National Intelligence Council, formerly under the CIA director, that produces national intelligence estimates — consensus reports of all agencies on specific subjects.

Intelligence officials critical of Mr. Negroponte’s choices said they will protect the status quo within the intelligence bureaucracy, rather that reshaping agencies to meet new challenges.

An official said the selection of Mrs. Graham, in particular, was a snub of Charles Allen, a gifted intelligence officer who for years has been in charge of managing intelligence collection at the CIA.

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