Over at Harper's, Ken Silverstein reports that John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, has said no to demands from CIA analysts and others to produce a National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. He's trying to protect President Bush from bad news.

“What do you call the situation in Iraq right now?” asked one person familiar with the situation. “The analysts know that it's a civil war, but there's a feeling at the top that [using that term] will complicate matters.” Negroponte, said another source regarding the potential impact of a pessimistic assessment, “doesn't want the president to have to deal with that.”

It's not new for Negroponte, though. I reported long ago that when Negroponte was U.S. ambassador in Iraq, he was constantly on the phone to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, chirping cheery news about the battle against the resistance in Iraq, even as the CIA station chief sent a steady stream of bad news to Washington. Eventually, according to intelligence sources, Powell's own intelligence team had to intervene directly, to counter Negroponte's happy talk and to make sure Powell was getting the straight stuff. Good to know Negroponte is still the same.