 Dick
Coffman is an international business and security
consultant and media commentator on intelligence,
homeland security and terrorism. He is managing
Director of Odysseus
Group International, which provides risk
management and security solutions to the transportation,
basic infrastructure and manufacturing industries.
Mr. Coffman specializes in ports and maritime
security and homeland defense. He is founder
and President of Coffman
Global Group, which leverages worldwide
networks for business development and marketing
in high technology, basic materials and capital
construction.
Mr. Coffman has conducted assessments of intelligence
operations for the U.S. Customs Service and
the Office of Naval Intelligence and for a
major defense contractor.
Mr. Coffman served 31 years in the Central
Intelligence Agency where he formed and managed
the Agency's first counterterrorism analytic
organization and served as Chief of Station,
chief of staff to the Director of the Clandestine
Service, coordinator of major worldwide covert
intelligence programs and CIA representative
to the NATO Commander.
He also served four years in the U.S. Marine
Corps, including duty in Vietnam in 1965 and
1966. Mr. Coffman remained in the Marine Corps
Reserves retiring in 1992 at the grade of
Colonel. Mr. Coffman is a student of military
history and an authority on the U.S. Civil
War.
Coffman
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February 22, 2005
If anybody can make something positive out of the contraption called the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), it is John Negroponte, truly an inspired choice by President Bush.
Bequeathed the nation by a misguided 9/11 Commission and made law by a politically intimidated Congress and White House, the DNI could further gum up the intelligence business, costing the nation precious time and wasting increasingly scarce intelligence resources while doing little to strengthen our security.
That is, unless John Negroponte turns out to be as skilled, experienced and tough-minded as his impressive resume suggests: consumer both of high level and tactical intelligence as a young foreign service officer in the U.S. Embassy in Saigon; as ambassador in Honduras in the mid-1980's where U.S. efforts to keep Central America free of further communist penetration were based; later as Colin Powell's Deputy National Security Advisor in the White House and ambassador in Mexico and the Philippines; more recently, as ambassador in the UN during the run-up to the Iraq War; and, as our first post-war ambassador in Baghdad.
Negroponte knows what good intelligence is and its value in executing U.S. policy; at least as important, he knows the cost when intelligence falls short. He cannot be conned about the qualities, significance or cost of intelligence. He further has been a central player in the national security interactions and bureaucratic dynamics in Washington and US missions abroad. He knows how to get big things done in this arena.
Apart from his personal qualities, what makes Negroponte's appointment so hopeful is that, as a career foreign service officer, he is not beholden to or encumbered by any particular intelligence organization. He has no personal stake in the outcome of budget, resource and priorities battles sure to mark his tenure.
This is in contrast to his deputy, National Security Agency Director Lt. Gen Michael Hayden, said to have been selected by the White House even before Negroponte. One of the urgent and dicey tasks of the DNI will be to rationalize and properly resource the hugely expensive technical collection agencies managed by the Pentagon, of which NSA is one of the biggest. The DNI will finally need to come to grips with whether the massive level of effort and funds poured into NSA dwarfs its return in timely, relevant and usable intelligence, both in peacetime and wartime.
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Negroponte has a healthy regard for the enormity of his task as DNI and, at his appointment, called this assignment his most difficult in 40 years of government service, itself laden with tough jobs.
He must know that if something goes wrong and the US suffers a second major terrorist attack, the next 9/11 Commission will be camped on his doorstep ready to assign blame.
He also must know that expectations for instant results are inflated far beyond reality thanks to the incessant and breathtaking lobbying of the 9/11 Commission and its acolytes cheered on by an uncritical press.
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