Promoted by Steven D.
The Senate Intelligence Committee began to consider the nomination of General Michael Hayden to be the new Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The nomination of a new Director for the Central Intelligence Agency comes at a time when the Agency is in disarray. Its current Director has apparently been forced out, and the previous Director, George Tenet, left under a cloud after having compromised his own objectivity and independence, and that of his Agency, by misusing Iraq intelligence to support the Administration’s policy agenda.
The new Director must be certain that the intelligence provided to the President and Congress is “timely, objective, (and) independent of political considerations.”
General Michael Hayden been nominated to replace George Tenent. Hayden has stated:
“This responsibility applies not only to the DNI and D/CIA, personally, but to all intelligence produced by the Intelligence Community.”
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SENATOR LEVIN’S CONCERNS
- Will General Hayden will restore analytical independence and objectivity at the CIA and speak truth to power?
- Will intelligence be shaped to support Administration policy and mislead Congress and the American people, as Director Tenet did?
- What, specifically are General Hayden’s views on electronic surveillance of American citizens?
The Administration has repeatedly characterized the electronic surveillance program as applying only to international phone calls and not involving any domestic surveillance.
In light of earlier statements, the last question is worth further exploration.
January’s statement from George Bush:
“the program focuses on calls coming from outside the United States… but not domestic calls.”
February’s statement from Dick Cheney:
“Some of our critics call this a, `domestic surveillance program.’ Wrong. That is inaccurate. It is not domestic surveillance.”
Anohter perspective from Ambassador Negroponte:
“This is a program that was ordered by the president of the United States with respect to international telephone calls to or from suspected Al Qaeda operatives and their affiliates…. This was not about domestic surveillance.”
A prior statement from General Hayden:
“the intrusion into privacy is also limited: only international calls.”
In addition, the NSA program gathers information about the calls of ordinary Americans — who aren’t suspected of any crime. The spy agency claims to be using the data to analyze calling patterns to detect terrorist activity.
According to the Justice Department:
“Although the program does not specifically target the communications of attorneys or physicians, calls involving such persons would not be categorically excluded from interception.”
Answers to questions about whether or not administration believes it is legal to wiretap purely domestic calls without a warrant (when al-Qaida activity is suspected) were avoided. However, no one said that it hadn’t been done.
“Interception of the content of domestic communications would present a different legal question.”
A person who did not want their identity revealed described the NSA’s activities as follows:
“It’s the largest database ever assembled in the world. [The agency’s goal is] “to create a database of every call ever made” [within the nation’s borders.]
Senator Levin continued:
Moreover, when Stephen Hadley, the President’s National Security Advisor, says that it’s hard to find a privacy issue here, I can’t buy that. It’s not hard to see how Americans could feel that their privacy has been intruded upon if the government has…a database of phone numbers calling and being called by tens of millions of Americans who are not suspected of any wrongdoing. It is hard to see however – if the leaks about this program are accurate – how the only intrusions into Americans’ privacy are related to international phone calls as General Hayden said. And it’s certainly not hard to see the potential for abuse – and the need for an effective check in law on the government’s use of that information.
