The Senate has confirmed retired Lt. Gen. James Clapper to serve as the Pentagon’s top intelligence official, a post vacated by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s man Stephen Cambone. Clapper, nominated by President Bush in January, had served for five years as head of the National Geo-spatial Intelligence Agency, before being forced out by Rumsfeld.
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall doesn’t see great value in trying to break the Sentinel ICBM program off as a separate budget item the way the Navy has with its ballistic-missile submarine program, saying such a move wouldn’t create any new money for the Air Force to spend on other…