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THEN THERE’S the issue of how the DNI will interact with two of the IC’s most important elements: the Department of Defense and the CIA. The DOD accounts for about 80 percent of the entire IC budget, since the three most pricey, technologically oriented intelligence agencies — the eavesdropping National Security Agency (NSA), the satellite logistics National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) — are under its control. But just as previous intelligence-reform bodies recommended that the CIA’s DI be removed from Langley and put under DNI control, so, too, did many advise that the three DOD spy agencies be moved from Pentagon to DNI control. The rationale was fairly simple: the military’s primary intelligence needs are tactical in nature (i.e., aimed at fighting and winning battles), and the systems under NSA, NRO, and NGA control are more strategic in nature, providing intelligence that isn’t exclusively military.

But in Washington, manpower and budget size matter — and since becoming secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld has lobbied to retain control of the three big-ticket intelligence agencies. Not only has Congress left the three agencies under Rumsfeld’s command, but it also mandated that the DNI not do anything affecting those agencies without "consulting" the secretary of defense. Furthermore, if such "consultations" end with the secretary of defense and DNI not seeing eye to eye, it’s up to the president to intervene.

"And how do you think that’s going to end?" asks a current congressional intelligence staffer and former CIA official. "On the one hand, you have a career diplomat without a strong relationship to the president who was far from the first choice. On the other hand, you have Rumsfeld, who despite fucking up a bunch of stuff and offering his resignation twice, is still in the president’s favor and is championed by the most powerful and influential vice-president in history. Anyone doubt whose side the White House is going to come down on in any dispute?"

According to a CIA veteran who once worked with Negroponte and has served as a budget liaison with others in the IC and on Capitol Hill, in this respect the future does not look promising for the new DNI. "Negroponte has a reputation for being someone who’s not easily bullied and unafraid to assert himself, and can hold his own with just about anyone," the officer says. "But like most professional diplomats, Negroponte believes that everything can be negotiated. And he’s going to go into meetings with Rumsfeld or his people from DOD expecting a negotiation, and they’re going to tell him, ‘This is our budget, this is where we’re going, we’re keeping it, and if you don’t like it, be it in the Oval Office or on the Hill, we’ll win.’ And they’re right."

OF COURSE, concern about Negroponte’s ability to get the job done extends far beyond rivalries over budget powers, and the stakes are extremely high. He also faces the daunting task of preventing overreaching at the Pentagon and CIA. In late 2002, for example, when Congress gave Rumsfeld authorization to create a new Pentagon undersecretariat for intelligence, observers noted that the change would allow the Pentagon to start expanding clandestine human-intelligence operations; recent news reports in the New Yorker and the Washington Post have confirmed that the Defense Department is doing just that. Historically, however, the Pentagon hasn’t been particularly skilled at running the spying and covert actions that are the CIA’s stock-in-trade. Indeed, over the past 20 years, the intelligence community has had some embarrassing moments when DOD elements have tried to take on such operations.

As for the CIA, many veterans of that agency wonder just how much influence Negroponte can have there, even with the president’s backing. Not only does the law afford the DNI little explicit control over each IC agency’s actual operations, but even if it did, the sheer number of duties the DNI has to juggle doesn’t lend itself to playing a hands-on role in fixing an agency recent director Porter Goss has arguably made worse.

"We’re really are at moment when a strong DNI needs to step in and say, ‘Okay, you guys on the military end and CIA end are going to play to your strengths, period,’ " says a former intelligence officer with both military and CIA experience. "Not only am I not sure that Negroponte as a person can do that, but even if he can, will he have the ability to enforce it, with such a small office with so much on its plate? I don’t know, but I tend not to think so."

The consensus among many IC veterans is that Negroponte stands a chance only if he chooses an individual aspect of the DNI portfolio as his focus, and ignores the rest. But that carries its own risks. "It’s Catch-22," says an IC counterterrorism officer. "You make it work by doing one thing to the exclusion of others, and you get attacked for excluding the others. Even if he does one or two things brilliantly, he’s going to come under criticism. And if, God forbid, there’s another terrorist attack on his watch and it has its roots in one of the areas he chooses not to focus on, he’ll be crucified." That may cost Negroponte his career, but ultimately the country will pay the price.

Jason Vest can be reached at JAV3603@aol.com