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Intelligence director focuses on spy service

Negroponte promoted two veterans of the CIA clandestine group.

WASHINGTON - John Negroponte's early moves since taking over as the nation's intelligence director last month indicate he is focusing on one particular element of America's spy apparatus: the CIA's highly secretive clandestine service.

Negroponte has promoted two veterans of the service to be his deputies. He also has sent a classified memo to the heads of the agency's foreign outposts, requiring them to report directly to him on matters of importance to the country's 15 intelligence agencies.

Some intelligence veterans say Negroponte is signaling his plans to reach deep into the clandestine service and provide extra oversight to an organization whose mistakes make headlines and can cause diplomatic blowups.

To other observers, his moves are an acknowledgment of the service's stature among those agencies.

This month, Negroponte picked Mary Margaret Graham as his deputy for intelligence collection. She was a senior member of the clandestine service who tussled with CIA director Porter Goss' senior aides. Negroponte's chief of staff is David Shedd, who spent much of his career in the clandestine service.

Representatives from the CIA and Negroponte's office played down the memo to the heads of the foreign outposts.

They said it reflected changes that Congress approved late last year in an intelligence overhaul, which created the director of national intelligence.

The CIA's clandestine service, officially known as the Directorate of Operations, is responsible for covert operations around the globe and dozens of CIA outposts abroad.

The victories the clandestine service can claim are often kept classified - and overshadowed by public failings.

Its operatives were the first to enter Afghanistan after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But it has come under fire in reports by the Sept. 11 commission and a presidential board studying intelligence agencies' ability to assess the threat from weapons of mass destruction.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks and the mistakes made on the prewar intelligence on Iraq, the spy agencies have been in the midst of overhauls. Former CIA director George Tenet stepped down last summer and was replaced by Goss.

[Last modified May 23, 2005, 01:24:11]