Gen. Hayden Is 'Wrong Man,' Hoekstra Says
By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 8, 2006
The Republican chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence panels raised serious concerns about Gen. Michael V. Hayden on the eve of his expected nomination today as CIA director, with Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) calling him "the wrong man at the wrong place at the wrong time."
Other Republicans and Democrats, appearing on Sunday talk shows, praised Hayden's credentials but said they, too, are troubled by President Bush's decision to place a military officer at the helm of a civilian intelligence agency. Aides expect Bush to name Hayden today as his choice to succeed Porter J. Goss, who was forced to step down last week. Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency and now deputy director of national intelligence, has defended Bush's domestic eavesdropping program since its disclosure in December.
The challenges to Hayden's expected nomination come when Bush is politically at his weakest and Republicans are distancing themselves from the White House in the hopes of retaining their grip on Congress in the midterm elections. The White House did not formally respond to the criticisms yesterday, but strategists said privately they are confident they can address Republican concerns and have Hayden confirmed.
"We respect their judgments, but strongly believe Mike Hayden will demonstrate why he is the right man for the job during this critical period for the agency," a senior White House official said by e-mail, on the condition of anonymity because Hayden has not been nominated yet. "Mr. Hayden has more than 20 years' experience in the intelligence business, and has proven to be an innovative and independent thinker."
White House officials also said they would not shy away from a fight with Democrats over what Bush has termed a "terrorist surveillance program," if that becomes the focus of Hayden's hearings. With the country essentially divided on the effort, which has allowed the NSA to scan the calls and e-mails of more than 5,000 Americans, the president has more support on that issue than most others.
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), who chairs the Judiciary Committee, has fought to obtain more information about the program, which he has said he believes is operating outside the law.
Although Hayden is considered to be one of the most popular intelligence briefers on the Hill, Specter has said he has been frustrated by the amount of information Hayden has shared with the committee. As a result, Specter said, confirmation hearings should center on the legality of the program that Hayden designed and ran in secret after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"There is no doubt there's an enormous threat from terrorism, but the president does not have a blank check," Specter said on "Fox News Sunday." "Now, with General Hayden up for confirmation, this will give us an opportunity to try to find out."
Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), who heads the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said he supports the NSA program and likes Hayden personally, but he did not embrace the expected nomination. "I'm not in a position to say that I am for General Hayden and will vote for him," said Roberts, whose committee will conduct Hayden's confirmation hearings.
That stance was in marked contrast to the overwhelming support Hayden had at his confirmation hearing to the national intelligence post in April 2005.
Roberts, who introduced Hayden at the time, began by saying that he had erred when describing him as "excellent." Roberts then said: "I have crossed that out and put 'outstanding.' "
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said the president "could not have made a finer appointment" than Hayden, and Sen. Carl M. Levin (Mich.), the only Democrat who questioned Hayden during the hearing, called him "a wonderful choice."
In a 1999 New Yorker magazine article, two years before the attacks that led to the establishment of the domestic spying program, Hayden was asked whether the agency could target Americans.
"I'm a kid from Pittsburgh with two sons and a daughter who are closet libertarians," he said. "I am not interested in doing anything that threatens the American people, and threatens the future of this agency. I can't emphasize enough to you how careful we are."
Hayden left the NSA last year to become the first deputy director for national intelligence, a coordination position established as part of a massive intelligence restructuring in response to failures before Sept. 11.
But the changes have weakened the CIA while empowering the defense secretary, and critics of Hayden's nomination cited that as one reason a military officer should not be put in charge at Langley.
Hayden, a four-star Air Force general who is not considered close to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, could retire to alleviate concerns about his Pentagon ties. Roberts said that might help his nomination. Hoekstra disagreed.
"It makes absolutely no difference to me whether he is a general or a retired general," he said in an interview yesterday. "Either way, it sends the exact wrong signal to CIA officers in the field at a critical time."
Thirteen of the 19 CIA directors had military service before their appointment, and the tradition had been to balance a military director with a civilian deputy or vice versa.
Hoekstra will not preside over the hearings, but he is an influential Republican voice on intelligence matters and works closely with the CIA in conducting oversight. With the president's popularity at all-time lows, Hoekstra criticized the decision to dismiss Goss, less than two weeks after Goss fired a CIA employee accused of leaking classified information. "It undermined Porter's efforts to stop leaks," Hoekstra said.
The CIA has been in turmoil for much of Bush's presidency, after the failures to prevent the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the flawed prewar assessments of Iraq's weapons programs. Those events were followed by 18 months of CIA management under Goss, who was forced aside last week amid an exodus of top officers at the agency and plummeting morale during a time of war.
Vice President Cheney, who is close both to Goss and to Hayden, said the next director will need to focus on the agency's core mission of sending out spies to collect information on targets such as al-Qaeda.
"We're faced with trying to find ways to figure out what a small group of terrorists are going to do. They're difficult to penetrate, difficult to track by national technical means," Cheney said in an interview with NBC News.
Hayden's intelligence expertise is not in the clandestine service, but in the technical world of communication intercepts and the use of satellite imagery to detect threats.
Staff writer Peter Baker contributed to this report.
View all comments that have been posted about this article.