President Bush today named John D. Negroponte as the director of national intelligence, a new position that will oversee the country's 15 intelligence agencies and exercise broad control over a multi-billion dollar intelligence budget.[...]"John brings a unique set of skills to these challenges," Mr. Bush said in a ceremony at the White House.

Mr. Negroponte said he was honored to be nominated by the President and called the job "the most challenging assignment I have undertaken in more than 40 years of government service."

Mr. Negroponte, 65, has been serving as the United States ambassador to Iraq since last summer, a tenure Mr. Bush called an "incalculable advantage for an intelligence chief." Mr. Negroponte had re-established that position shortly before the transfer of sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government in late June.

Before that, Mr. Negroponte had served as United States ambassador to the United Nations.[...]
At least three potential nominees approached by the White House have turned the job down, officials have said.

Lt. General Michael Hayden of the Air Force will serve as Mr. Negroponte's deputy director, Mr. Bush said. Mr. Hayden, who was said to have been on the White House's short list of nominees for the head position, is the director of the National Security Agency and the chief of the Central Security Service.

From 1981 to 1985, Negroponte was the U.S. ambassador to Honduras, a country that was being used as a training and staging ground for the CIA-created and -backed Contra armies, who relied on a terrorist strategy of targeting civilians. Those years saw a massive increase in U.S. military aid to Honduras, and Negroponte was a key player in organizing training for the Contras and procuring weapons for the armies that the United States was building in order to topple the socialist Nicaraguan government (Extra!, 9-10/01).

Negroponte's ambassadorship was marked by another human rights scandal: the Honduran army's Battalion 316, which operated as a death squad that tortured, killed or disappeared "subversive" Hondurans-- and at least one U.S. citizen, Catholic priest James Carney. Despite regular reporting of such crimes in the Honduran press, the human rights reports of Negroponte's embassy consistently failed to raise these issues. Critics contend that this was no accident: If such crimes had been acknowledged, U.S. aid to the country's military would have come under scrutiny, which could have jeopardized the Contra operations.

The Washington Post reports on a new US Submarine capable of tapping sub-ocean laser communications trunk lines all around the globe. The Wash. Post states: According to intelligence experts, it can tap undersea cables and eavesdrop on the communications passing through them. The military has just opened the door to trade, business, and economic espionage on both our allies and enemies.