From The Guardian, 5/8/06:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1769883,00.html
White House is warned against Bush nominee for head of CIA
· Appointment threatens to worsen intelligence crisis
· Concerns raised over Pentagon's role at agency
Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Monday May 8, 2006
The Guardian
The Bush administration, which emerged from the September 11 2001
attacks vowing to make the United States safe from terrorists, was
yesterday warned that it risked provoking a new crisis over
intelligence if the president appointed a controversial general to
head the CIA.
Mr Bush is widely expected to nominate General Michael Hayden as head
of the intelligence agency today, three days after the abrupt
departure of the agency's director, Porter Goss.
The choice of a career military officer to lead the CIA was criticised
by Republicans and Democrats yesterday for concentrating control of
intelligence in the Pentagon.
The nomination of Gen Hayden has deepened doubts about the
independence and effectiveness of an organisation still struggling
with its failures in the Iraq war and the September 11 attacks.
Gen Hayden's appointment would be controversial, moreover, because as
a former director of the National Security Agency he was the architect
of a programme to eavesdrop on American telephone calls and emails
without court oversight.
The latest tumultuous chapter in the recent history of the CIA opened
on Friday, when Mr Goss resigned after less than two years in the
post.
No official reason was given, but his exit was linked to his failure
to win the confidence of senior CIA staff and to his bruising
bureaucratic power struggles with the National Intelligence director,
John Negroponte, who wanted to hive off the CIA's analytical branch.
The defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has also been pressing for the
Pentagon to take over some of the CIA's work in foreign intelligence.
In addition, at least one of Mr Goss's closest aides is under
investigation for possible links to a corruption scandal in which
members of Congress were plied with bribes and prostitutes in return
for defence contracts.
A former California Republican congressman, Duke Cunningham, is
serving eight years in jail in the widening scandal.
Amid this atmosphere of crisis, a leading Republican congressman
warned yesterday that he feared the CIA would be compromised by
putting the agency under the control of a serving military officer.
"Putting a general in charge - regardless of how good Mike is - is
going to send the wrong signal to the agency in Washington, but also
to agents in the field around the world," Peter Hoekstra, the
Republican chair of the house intelligence committee, told Fox
television.
Republican as well as Democratic members of the Senate intelligence
committee, which must approve Mr Bush's choice of CIA director, have
also expressed reservations about expanding the Pentagon's control
over intelligence.
"You can't have the military control most of the major aspects of
intelligence," Dianne Feinstein, a Democratic senator from California,
a member of the committee, told ABC TV.
Some critics say Gen Hayden lacks the background in human intelligence
that is meant to be the CIA's new focus.
The NSA concentrates on signals and satellites intelligence.
He also presents a convenient target for critics of the domestic
eavesdropping programme.
Although the White House is said to be confident of public support for
the wiretaps - which the administration calls the terrorist
surveillance programme - a number of senators said they planned to use
Gen Hayden's confirmation hearings to press for fuller disclosure on
eavesdropping.
"I believe this nomination will give us an opportunity to try to find
out what the programme is," Senator Arlen Specter, the Republican
chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, told Fox TV.
Gen Hayden has a reputation for toughness and his public defence of
the warrantless surveillance programme showed his aggressiveness.
Matthew Aid, a historian who is writing a book on the NSA, said:
"He can be an SOB if he wants to be."
As the battle lines were being drawn on Capitol Hill, there was
further speculation in intelligence circles on the circumstances of Mr
Goss's departure.
In his brief and stormy tenure at the CIA, he was believed to have
clashed regularly with the newly created overlord for intelligence, Mr
Negroponte.
However, some analysts said while they were engaged in a struggle over
resources, there were also clashes over the CIA's assessment of Iraq.
"Iraq played a much bigger role than people realise," said a former
CIA counter-terror expert.
"The agency estimates on Baghdad continued to be very pessimistic and
continued to alarm the White House."
Backstory
The low morale and exodus of senior officers during the brief and
stormy tenure of Porter Goss as head of the CIA masks a bitter power
struggle over control of intelligence between the agency and the
Pentagon.
The defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, is making aggressive moves to
expand the Pentagon's role in intelligence-gathering in the US's
so-called war on terror.
The Special Operations Command has now assumed the leading role in the
activities associated with the "war on terror", and clandestine
military teams have been deployed around the world to gather
intelligence and mount operations.
The Pentagon now has the authority to deploy teams without informing
resident US ambassadors.
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It's time for this un-American, criminal administration to go.
Harry
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