WASHINGTON – CIA director nominee Michael Hayden acknowledged concerns about civil liberties even as he vigorously defended the Bush administration’s warrantless eavesdropping program as a legal spy tool needed to ensnare terrorists.
Peppered with tough questions at a daylong confirmation hearing Thursday, the four-star Air Force general portrayed himself as an independent thinker, capable of taking over the CIA as it struggles with issues ranging from nuclear threats to its place among 15 other spy agencies.
Hayden spoke of his own concerns about the no-warrant surveillance program and other eavesdropping operations he oversaw as National Security Agency chief from 1999 until last year.
“Clearly, the privacy of American citizens is a concern – constantly,” he told the Senate Intelligence Committee. “And it’s a concern in this program. It’s a concern in everything we’ve done.”
Hayden said he decided to go ahead with the terrorist surveillance program in October 2001 after internal discussions about what more the NSA could do to detect potential attacks. He believed the work to be legal and necessary, an assertion Democrats and civil liberties groups have aggressively questioned.
Bush selected Hayden to be the nation’s 20th CIA director earlier this month, knowing his choice would inflame the debate about the NSA program to monitor domestic calls and e-mails when one person is overseas and terrorism is suspected. Breaking new ground, the work was done without any court approval.
Hayden declined to openly discuss the call monitoring reports, saying he would talk only about the part of the program the president had confirmed.
“Is that the whole program?” asked Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.
“I’m not at liberty to talk about that in open session,” said Hayden, currently the nation’s No. 2 intelligence official. A closed-door session was held in the evening.
Even as Republicans praised Hayden, senators of both parties said they should have been briefed on the work five years ago. More than one Democrat said he felt deceived.
Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., said he was convinced the program was illegal and questioned whether the phone calls of Americans not linked to al-Qaida were ever captured. Hayden didn’t answer directly.
“If you’re using a ‘probable cause’ standard as opposed to absolute certitude,” he said, “sometimes you may not be right.”
If confirmed, Hayden would take over a struggling CIA, groping to define its role after the 2004 overhaul of the spy community in response to the mistakes on Sept. 11, 2001, and the prewar Iraq intelligence.
“I also believe it’s time to move past what seems to me to be an endless picking apart of the archaeology of every past intelligence success or failure,” he said.
Hayden pledged to reform the agency by focusing on traditional spycraft and the quality of intelligence analysis. He also said he’d give policy-makers the unvarnished truth, a reference to criticisms of the spy agencies in the run-up to Iraq.
“When it comes to speaking truth to power, I will lead CIA analysts by example,” he said. “I will – as I expect every analyst will – always give our nation’s leaders the best analytic judgment.”
On the world’s hot spots, Hayden acknowledged a series of intelligence failures in the run-up to the U.S. decision to invade Iraq in March 2003, and he promised to take steps to guard against a repeat of such errors.
“We’re not doing that on Iran,” he said. “Besides the technical intelligence, there’s a much more complex and harder to develop field of intelligence that has to be applied as well: How are decisions made in that country?”
The White House hopes the Senate could approve Hayden as soon as next week, enabling him to step in as Porter Goss departs on May 26. Even with the tough questioning, Hayden appeared likely to be confirmed in the Republican-controlled Senate.
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