06-06-10 Clapper Nominated as Intelligence Director

President Barack Obama nominated Defense Department intelligence chief James Clapper to be the nation's top spymaster,an appointment that taps decades of spy experience but is likely to meet with resistance on Capitol Hill.If confirmed,Mr.Clapper would be the fourth director in the five years since Congress created the office,and will take on a responsibility for managing all 16 spy agencies that his predecessors struggled to corral.In a Rose Garden announcement,Mr.Obama praised Mr.Clapper's experience and reputation for speaking his mind."With four decades of service to America,Jim is one of our nation's most experienced and most respected intelligence professionals,'Mr.Obama said."He possesses a quality that I value in all my advisers:a willingness to tell leaders what we need to know even if it's not what we want to hear.'Mr.Obama abruptly fired his first director of national intelligence,Dennis Blair,last month.In its search for a new intelligence director,the White House approached a host of current and former national security officials,only to be repeatedly turned down —most notably by Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta—according to several officials familiar with the process.The intelligence director is nominally responsible for overseeing all U.S. spy agencies,but he has little power to control their budgets and personnel.In addition to managing the intelligence aspects of the Afghanistan troop buildup and the Iraq drawdown,Mr.Clapper will take on a multitude of internal challenges,the largest being the growing perception that the director of national intelligence model is broken