Spy Czar Gains Clout
President Bush on Wednesday handed Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte broad authority over America’s disparate and often-competing spy agencies, bringing U.S. domestic and foreign intelligence operations more closely under White House control. Bush ordered the changes three months after a presidential commission issued a withering indictment of the intelligence failures that preceded the Iraq war. The commission said that a poorly coordinated intelligence community in the U.S. was producing work that was becoming “increasingly irrelevant.”Full Story