BUSH'S NEW INTELLIGENCE CZAR.

This article profiles John Negroponte who has been chosen by President George W. Bush to be the first Director of National Intelligence. Negroponte, 65, is the consummate diplomat--discreet, deliberate and always careful choosing his words, whether in English, French, Greek, Spanish or Vietnamese. As the government's new intelligence czar and the President's primary intelligence adviser--a position created late last year by Congress the new chief has the job of making sure that the kinds of intelligence stumbles that led up to 9/11 and the sorts of miscalculations about Iraq's WMD programs don't happen again. If confirmed by the Senate, Negroponte would oversee parts of 15 different agencies, including the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, agencies whose willingness to share closely guarded secrets is notoriously poor and whose suspicion of one another is strong. Negroponte will deliver the President's daily intelligence briefing and will have ultimate authority over the nation's sprawling intel apparatus, including an estimated $40 billion annual budget. But considering how vague the legislation that established the DNI is, Negroponte's ability to actually do that is an open question. Negroponte won't have to fight alone. His deputy will be Air Force Lieut. General Michael Hayden, who has overseen electronic eavesdropping and code breaking for the intelligence community as chief of the highly secretive National Security Agency for the past six years. INSET: BUILDING A BETTER SPY NETWORK.