NY Sun:

A senior intelligence community official yesterday said the director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, has indicated "he is willing to give up covert operations to the Pentagon."

The source also pointed out that the Pentagon has requested increased budget authority to prepare for the acquisition of the CIA's targeted military operations. The intelligence overhaul of 2004 envisioned that they would remain under the purview of the CIA.

The authority to commission and plan these secret military operations has been a point of contention since 2004 when Congress and the White House began reorganizing the intelligence community.

The proposed change would give the Pentagon unfettered authority to plan and conduct these operations without consulting an intelligence bureaucracy its civilian leaders have deemed hostile to the president's war policy. [...]

But the senior intelligence community official yesterday said he expected almost everything except for the human intelligence collection role of the CIA to be removed from the agency. This source said that Mr. Negroponte "is going to strip analysis, strip out covert operation, science, and technology."

Posted by Laura at May 8, 2006 07:29 AM