Obama to Name Retired General to Top Spy Post

Obama to Name Retired General to Top Spy Post
By PETER BAKER and ERIC SCHMITT
Copyright by The Associated Press
Published: June 4, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/05/us/politics/05intel.html?th&emc=th


WASHINGTON — President Obama has picked Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr. as director of national intelligence, tapping a retired officer with decades of experience to improve coordination of the nation’s sprawling spy apparatus amid increasing threats at home and escalating operations abroad.

Mr. Obama plans to announce his choice in the Rose Garden on Saturday, two weeks after forcing Adm. Dennis C. Blair out of the spymaster job, according to administration officials, who insisted on anonymity to disclose the decision before the formal ceremony.

The selection amounts to pushing the reset button for the president as he tries to recalibrate an intelligence structure that has undergone continued revamping since the debacle leading up to the Iraq war, yet by most accounts still lacks the cohesion necessary in an evolving war with terrorists. Even as intelligence agencies expand their role overseas with drone strikes in Pakistan and increased focus on Yemen and Somalia, they have faced a spate of attempted attacks in the United States.

General Clapper, 69, who retired in 1995 after 32 years in the Air Force, rose from a signals intelligence officer to undersecretary of defense for intelligence, overseeing all military spy operations. In picking him, the president found an intelligence veteran who clashed with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and was pushed out of office as a result, only to return to the Pentagon as a top lieutenant to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.

If confirmed by the Senate, General Clapper will be the fourth official since 2005 to oversee the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies, a job created in the aftermath of the Iraq intelligence failures. Some intelligence officials have portrayed the job as a bureaucratic nightmare. Essentially, it involves coordinating some very powerful intelligence chiefs, including the C.I.A. director, who have bigger budgets, their own power bases and access to administration officials and members of Congress.

But Mr. Obama concluded that General Clapper’s experience would enable him to fix a dysfunctional situation. “He has a mandate to work it better and that will require some changes,” said a senior administration official.

“He knows the inside of the business better than anybody I know,” said John J. Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary and now president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But General Clapper will have to figure out how to refashion the job created by Congress to be more effective. “You can’t administratively fix birth defects in legislation,” Mr. Hamre said.

General Clapper may face a fight to get confirmed. The choice generated consternation in the Senate, where some Democrats and Republicans complained that he is too closely aligned to the military, has resisted strengthening the office he has been selected for, and has not cultivated close ties on Capitol Hill.

“He has served honorably and with distinction for a long time, but he’s focused too much on Defense Department issues,” Senator Christopher Bond of Missouri, the ranking Republican on the intelligence committee, said in a telephone interview on Friday. “And I don’t believe that he’s been forthcoming and open with the Intelligence Committee.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the Democratic chairwoman of the intelligence committee, was traveling on Friday and unavailable for comment, her office said. But Ms. Feinstein also expressed reservations when General Clapper emerged as an early front-runner to succeed Mr. Blair last month, saying it would be better to appoint a civilian to the job. However, several leading candidates — including Mr. Hamre; Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director; and former Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska — all made clear they were not interested.

Other senators said that General Clapper lacked a forceful enough personality and management style to assert control over the sprawling American intelligence apparatus.

“There are problems within the intelligence community that must be addressed in a very strong and direct way,” Senator Saxby Chambliss, a Georgia Republican on the committee, said through a spokeswoman. “I have real reservations about General Clapper being that person.”

But General Clapper has an independent streak and has not been afraid to challenge bosses in the past. When Congress was debating the creation of the director of national intelligence job, General Clapper was director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the little-known part of the nation’s spy infrastructure that analyzes maps and secret satellite imagery. He told Congress that he would support transferring his agency from the Pentagon to the control of the new intelligence director.

That position contradicted the views of Mr. Rumsfeld, who eventually forced out General Clapper in 2006. But Mr. Rumsfeld was pushed out by President George W. Bush later that year and was replaced by Mr. Gates, who rehired the retired general for the Pentagon’s top intelligence job in 2007.

In 2008, General Clapper oversaw the dismantling of a controversial military intelligence office that lawmakers and civil liberties groups said was part of a Pentagon effort to expand into domestic spying. Mr. Rumsfeld created the unit, called the Counterintelligence Field Activity Office, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to counter the operations of foreign intelligence services and terrorist groups in the United States and abroad.

But the secretive office came under sharp criticism in 2005 after it was revealed that it was managing a database that included information about antiwar protests planned at churches, schools and Quaker meeting halls. General Clapper ordered an end to the database, called Talon, and most of the office’s operations were merged into the military’s Defense Intelligence Agency, which General Clapper led from 1991 to 1995.

The director of national intelligence is supposed to oversee the nation’s separate spy agencies and serve as the president’s primary adviser on matters of intelligence. But in practice, the director’s authority has been murky, particularly since the vast majority of America’s annual intelligence budget of nearly $50 billion is out of his direct control because it goes to spy satellites and high-tech listening devices operated by the Pentagon.

It has also been unclear how much control the director has over the C.I.A., which has grown in power as it has taken on an expanded role in secret wars in Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere.

In fact, General Clapper’s predecessor was seen as being on the losing end of internal battles with Mr. Panetta. over who would appoint station chiefs around the world. Mr. Blair had little chemistry with Mr. Obama, officials said, and the president criticized the coordination of intelligence sharing after the botched effort to blow up a Northwest Airlines passenger jet last Christmas.

The president decided to make a change and sat down with General Clapper in the Oval Office on May 5, when he asked the retired general for his views of the future of intelligence operations and the director’s job specifically, according to an administration official briefed on the session. General Clapper followed up with a letter about his vision that impressed the president, the official said. Mr. Blair resigned under pressure on May 20.

Those who know him say that General Clapper is expected to work smoothly with Mr. Panetta and John O. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s counterterrorism chief.

“Jim is a true intelligence professional,” said Gen. Michael V. Hayden, a former C.I.A. director.