A Spy Chief’s Political Education
By MARK MAZZETTI
New York Times
WASHINGTON, Aug. 7 — Last Thursday evening, during the frantic endgame of a White House push to broaden its eavesdropping authorities, Democratic leaders from the House and the Senate gathered in the Capitol office of Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, for a conference call with Mike McConnell, the nation’s top intelligence official.
Mr. McConnell was acting as the Bush administration’s chief negotiator for the measure, and the Democrats were furious to learn that he had rejected their latest proposal. They questioned whether Mr. McConnell had succumbed to pressure from the White House and Republican lawmakers. He denied those accusations, but admitted that intense pressure from Congressional leaders of both parties had taken a toll.
“I’ve spent 40 years of my life in this business, and I’ve been shot at during war,” Mr. McConnell responded, according to people who participated in the conference call. “I’ve never felt so much pressure in my life.”
The last several weeks have been a political education of sorts for Mr. McConnell, a retired admiral who reluctantly left a lucrative private sector job to take over in February as director of national intelligence. Mr. McConnell has won praise from Democrats and Republicans alike for his efforts to overhaul the country’s byzantine intelligence structure, but his role as the White House’s most visible advocate for changing the surveillance law has brought intense criticism from those who question whether an intelligence chief should become part of a political scrum.
(Continued here.)
New York Times
WASHINGTON, Aug. 7 — Last Thursday evening, during the frantic endgame of a White House push to broaden its eavesdropping authorities, Democratic leaders from the House and the Senate gathered in the Capitol office of Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, for a conference call with Mike McConnell, the nation’s top intelligence official.
Mr. McConnell was acting as the Bush administration’s chief negotiator for the measure, and the Democrats were furious to learn that he had rejected their latest proposal. They questioned whether Mr. McConnell had succumbed to pressure from the White House and Republican lawmakers. He denied those accusations, but admitted that intense pressure from Congressional leaders of both parties had taken a toll.
“I’ve spent 40 years of my life in this business, and I’ve been shot at during war,” Mr. McConnell responded, according to people who participated in the conference call. “I’ve never felt so much pressure in my life.”
The last several weeks have been a political education of sorts for Mr. McConnell, a retired admiral who reluctantly left a lucrative private sector job to take over in February as director of national intelligence. Mr. McConnell has won praise from Democrats and Republicans alike for his efforts to overhaul the country’s byzantine intelligence structure, but his role as the White House’s most visible advocate for changing the surveillance law has brought intense criticism from those who question whether an intelligence chief should become part of a political scrum.
(Continued here.)
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