DiTrani Will Head U.S. Intel Effort Against North Korea
My acquaintance (heh) Ambassador DiTrani is headed for a high-level intel position covering North Korea:
The former U.S. special envoy for North Korea Joseph DeTrani was on Wednesday appointed to the newly created post of “mission manager” for North Korea under the director for national intelligence, to whose office he was moved on Dec. 3.
Intelligence Director John Negroponte outlined DeTrani’s duties as confirming intelligence reports on North Korea and filling in any gaps, and serving as a stand-in for the director in various capacities. The post was created at the recommendation of a presidential committee that found Washington’s intelligence on the reclusive country “woefully inadequate. The same day, Leslie Ireland, a former executive assistant to the C.I.A. director, was named mission manager for Iran.
The New York Times, also discussing Amb. DiTrani’s newly selected counterpart for Iran, S. Leslie Ireland, gives us
Ambassador DeTrani and Ms. Ireland are to provide strategic leadership over American intelligence agencies’ work on North Korea and Iran, whose nuclear-weapons programs remain a major concern of the Bush administration, in part because so little is known about them. In its report last year, the Robb-Silberman commission, an independent panel appointed by President Bush, described American intelligence on Iran and North Korea as woefully inadequate.
. . . .Ambassador DeTrani, who speaks Chinese and French, spent a number of years in East Asia and the Middle East during a career that included senior assignments at the Central Intelligence Agency, according to his official biography. At the C.I.A., his posts included director of European operations, director of the crime and narcotics center, and director of East Asia operations.
My most recent post on Amb. DiTrani and his departure from the six-party negotiating team is here. I don’t have a very good feeling about this. DiTrani struck me as unlikely to support the kind of subversive policies our intelligence community should adopt toward North Korea.