US President George W. Bush's nominee to be the nation's first intelligence director promised fundamental changes at the 15 agencies he would oversee and said he would give policy-makers the "unvarnished truth" about security threats.
"Our intelligence effort has to generate better results. That's my mandate, plain and simple," John Negroponte, a veteran diplomat and former ambassador to post-Saddam Hussein Iraq, told the Senate Intelligence Committee at his confirmation hearing on Tuesday.
Democrats, still chafed by the botched intelligence on Iraq, said they were skeptical that Negroponte could be the independent arbiter of intelligence the nation needs and questioned whether he adequately reported human-rights abuses as ambassador to Honduras two decades ago.
Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, said Negroponte's 1980s-era declassified communications suggest he was "an ambassador to a different country" and "saw things through an administration-colored lens." He was ambassador to Honduras under the late president Ronald Reagan, when Central America was seen by some government officials as locked into a Cold War showdown.
In his hearing, Negroponte, backed firmly by the committee's Republicans, repeatedly tried to assure senators of his objectivity.
"My punchline is, I believe in calling things the way I see them, and I believe that the president deserves from his director of national intelligence and from the intelligence community unvarnished truth," he said.
Negroponte's confirmation is expected to win easy approval by the intelligence panel and the full Senate, exercising its duty under the US Constitution to confirm many presidential appointments.
That would make Negroponte the first national intelligence director, charged with overseeing the government's 15 highly competitive spy agencies. The job that Congress created last year represents the most sweeping change to the intelligence agencies' leadership since 1947.
Negroponte will take over a spy community that has become known for bureaucratic infighting.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not