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A year ago in July, a National Intelligence Estimate warned that al Qaeda had "protected or regenerated key elements of its Homeland attack capability," meaning it could be poised to strike America again. The political reaction was instantaneous and damning. "This clearly says al Qaeda is not beaten," said Michael Scheuer, the former CIA spook turned antiterror scold. What a difference 10 months – and a surge – make. CIA Director Michael Hayden painted a far more optimistic picture in an interview yesterday in the Washington Post. "On balance, we are doing pretty well," he said. "Near strategic defeat of...

CIA Director Michael Hayden gave a noteworthy interview to the Washington Post this week. According to the Post: Less than a year after his agency warned of new threats from a resurgent al-Qaeda, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden now portrays the terrorist movement as essentially defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia and on the defensive throughout much of the rest of the world, including in its presumed haven along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. In a strikingly upbeat assessment, the CIA chief cited major gains against al-Qaeda’s allies in the Middle East and an increasingly successful campaign to destabilize the group’s core...

Download this latest episode of Covert Radio to find out. Bill Roggio from the Long War Journal reacts to CIA Director Hayden on his claims that AQ is largely defeated. Bill raises questions about the claim including issues of Al Qaeda fundraising in the Gulf States and Saudi Arabia–the so called Golden Chain. Bill looks at Al Qaeda ascendancy in other areas including Somalia and Egypt. It is l10 minutes of critical analysis.

CIA director Michael Hayden came under stiff challenge for portraying Al-Qaeda as on the defensive after global setbacks, even in its safe havens along the Afghan-Pakistani border.Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, Jay Rockefeller, said Hayden's upbeat appraisal was not consistent with intelligence assessments provided his committee over the past year."In fact, I have seen nothing, including classified intelligence reporting, that would lead me to this conclusion," Rockefeller said in a scathing letter to the Central Intelligence Agency director.Hayden's assessment -- one of the most positive since the September 11, 2001 attacks -- comes less than a year after US intelligence warnings...

Swelling populations and a global tide of immigration will present new security challenges for the United States by straining resources and stoking extremism and civil unrest in distant corners of the globe, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said in a speech yesterday. ...Hayden, speaking at Kansas State University, described the projected 33 percent growth in global population over the next 40 years as one of three significant trends that will alter the security landscape in the current century. By 2050, the number of humans on Earth is expected to rise from 6.7 billion to more than 9 billion, he said....

CIA Director Michael Hayden said Wednesday that Iranian policy, at the highest government level, is to help kill Americans in Iraq, the boldest pronouncement of Iranian involvement by a U.S. official to date. Hayden made the statement in response to a student question while delivering the Landon Lecture at Kansas State University. "It is my opinion, it is the policy of the Iranian government, approved to highest level of that government, to facilitate the killing of Americans in Iraq," Hayden said. "Just make sure there's clarity on that." In recent weeks, U.S. officials have ratcheted up their complaints that Iran...

CIA Director Michael Hayden said Monday that the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor destroyed by an Israeli airstrike in September would have produced enough plutonium for one or two bombs within a year of becoming operational. U.S. intelligence and administration officials publicly disclosed last week their assessment that Syria was building a covert nuclear reactor with North Korean assistance. They said it was modeled on the shuttered North Korean reactor at Yongbyon, which produced a small amount of plutonium. The Syrian site, they said, was within weeks or months of being operational. "In the course of a year after they got...

CIA director Michael Hayden said today al-Qaeda was training operatives who "look western" and could enter the United States undetected to conduct terrorist attacks. General Hayden said the terror network over the past 18 months has established a safe haven in tribal areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan where they are preparing militants for attacks against the West. "They are bringing operatives into that region for training - operatives that, a phrase I would use, wouldn't attract your attention if they were going through the customs line at Dulles (airport near Washington DC) with you," Gen Hayden told NBC television. The new...

The Talk Shows Sunday, March 30th, 2008 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Jack Reed, D-R.I.; Stan Kasten, team president of the Washington Nationals. MEET THE PRESS (NBC): CIA Director Michael Hayden. FACE THE NATION (CBS): Gov. Bill Richardson, D-N.M.; Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter; Democratic strategist Joe Trippi. THIS WEEK (ABC): Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.; Gov. Ed Rendell, D-Pa. LATE EDITION (CNN) : Aaron Miller, former State Department adviser; Heraldo Munoz, Chilean ambassador to the United Nations; Sens. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., and...

CIA Director Michael V. Hayden yesterday named Michael J. Sulick to head the National Clandestine Service, bringing back to government service a veteran covert operator who left almost three years ago after a confrontation with aides to Hayden's predecessor, former congressman Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.). In announcing the appointment, Hayden described Sulick as "a familiar figure to many of you" and "a seasoned operations officer" who "earned a reputation for superior tradecraft and sound judgment." In November 2004, Stephen R. Kappes, then CIA deputy director of operations, the top spy position, and Sulick, then his deputy, became involved in a...

Hayden: CIA had fewer than 100 prisoners By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer 11 minutes ago Most of the information in a July intelligence report on the terrorist threat to America came from the U.S. government's much-criticized program of detaining and interrogating prisoners, CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden said Friday in defending the policy. The CIA has detained fewer than 100 people at secret facilities abroad since the capture of Abu Zubaydah in 2002, Hayden told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City, according to an advance copy of his speech. He staunchly defended the program, saying even...

Cindy Sheehan, Tom Hayden, and the Hate America Left meet with pro-Ba'athist members of the Iraqi parliament to discuss “peace.” TO FIND PEOPLE WHO HATE AMERICA AS MUCH AS THEY DO, the Fifth Column Left had to go halfway around the world to meet with Iraqi political leaders who call terrorism “honorable national resistance” and say foreign jihadists “are guaranteed Paradise” – and at least one of whom has ties to militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr. By the end of the trip, the American leftists would echo these sentiments. Somehow most of the media – occupied with interminable coverage of Hurricane...

The Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation led to official investigations and reforms in the 1970s, according to declassified documents posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive at George Washington University. CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden announced today that the Agency is declassifying the full 693-page file amassed on CIA's illegal activities by order of then-CIA director James Schlesinger in 1973--the so-called "family jewels." Only a few dozen heavily-censored pages of this file have previously been declassified, although multiple Freedom of Information...

C-SPAN, Q&AWashington, District of Columbia (United States) ID: 197533 - 04/09/2007 - 0:58 - $19.95 Hayden, Michael V. Director, Central Intelligence Agency General Michael Hayden discussed how he runs the Central Intelligence Agency, how decisions are made, and his previous work in other areas of intelligence.

In Fonda’s Footsteps: Murtha, Kucinich, and the Antiwar Movement’s Economic WarBy Fedora There is only one way to end this war. Cut off the funds. --Dennis Kucinich, November 15, 2006 When John Murtha recently announced legislative plans to cut off funding for US troop deployment in Iraq, he was following the same game plan Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden had used three decades earlier in Vietnam. The descent of this antiwar strategy can be traced from Fonda and Hayden to Murtha through an antiwar lobby that dates from the Vietnam War and has been spearheaded through the current war by...

When CODEPINK launched our hunger strike, called Troops Home Fast on July 4, our goal was to push forward a peace process in Iraq that included the withdrawal of US troops. Our efforts were rewarded when Iraqi Parliamentarians, expressing sympathy for the hunger strikers, invited us to Amman, Jordan, to break our 30-day fast and discuss how we could work together to promote a comprehensive Reconciliation Plan. On Wednesday, August 2, a 14-person delegation, including "peace mom" Cindy Sheehan, former Colonel Ann Wright, Iraq war veteran Geoffrey Millard, writer/politician Tom Hayden, Iraqi analyst Raed Jarrar and CODEPINK co-founders Medea Benjamin,...

American Flyer! Hayden Wins USGP At Laguna Seca BOMBSHELL: ROSSI DNF by staff Sunday, July 23, 2006 Pos. Rider Team Bike 1 Nicky Hayden Repsol Honda Team Honda RC211V 2 Dani Pedrosa Repsol Honda Team Honda RC211V 3 Marco Melandri Fortuna Honda Honda RC211V 4 Kenny Roberts Jnr. Team Roberts KR211V 5 Chris Vermeulen R izla Suzuki MotoGP Suzuki GSV-R 6 John Hopkins Rizla Suzuki MotoGP Suzuki GSV-R 7 Carlos Checa Tech 3 Yamaha Yamaha YZR-M1 8 Loris Capirossi Ducati Marlboro Ducati Desmo GP-6 9 Colin Edwards Camel Yamaha Team Yamaha YZR-M1 10 Sete Gibernau Ducati Marlboro Ducati Desmo GP-6...

Whether The New York Times damaged national security by disclosing a highly classified intelligence program monitoring terrorist financing is, of course, the overriding question in the debate over that newspaper's controversial revelation. But, inevitably, the issue raises another question that so far has gone largely unexamined: Who is winning the resulting political battle over the press and national security? If it's President Bush, the administration and Republicans are being handed a potentially potent wedge issue. That could strengthen Bush's hand, not only in domestic political terms but in the far more important global struggle against a lethal terrorist enemy. If,...

Here we go again???

When President Bush nominated Gen. Michael Hayden to run the CIA, the press focused on disapproving Democrats and even some Republicans who were dubious about confirmation. A month later, when the Senate confirmed Hayden by a 78-15 vote, the story was given much less emphasis in the media, which had moved on to other stories critical of the Bush administration. Similarly, when Bush nominated one of his aides, Brett Kavanaugh, to the federal judiciary, the press was filled with reports about Democrats threatening a filibuster because Kavanaugh once worked for special prosecutor Kenneth Starr in the case against President Clinton....

President Bush attended the swearing-in ceremony for Gen. Michael Hayden as the new CIA Director. Read the president's remarks here. He met with Rwandan President Paul Kagame at the White House to discuss AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), peacekeeping contributions in Sudan, and Rwanda's strides toward reconciliation, democracy, and inclusiveness, and the important role of women in advancing these vital objectives. US sets conditions for talks with Iran. The first lady was in New Orleans, speaking at Tulane University; and for a tour of an exhibition at The Historic New Orleans Collection. Welcome to Sanity...

Pittsburgh's CIA chief honors 'family, country, God' By Francis Garland TRIBUNE-REVIEW Saturday, May 27, 2006 Harry Hayden's oldest son has been the source of much pride to his father since he stepped off the campus of Duquesne University and began jetting through the ranks of the U.S. Air Force in the late 1960s.

Senate confirms Hayden as CIA director By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer After hearing assurances he will be independent of the Pentagon, the Senate on Friday easily confirmed Gen. Michael Hayden, a career Air Force man, to head the CIA. Hayden, a four-star general, currently is the top deputy to National Intelligence Director John Negroponte. Hayden, 61, would be the first active-duty or retired military officer to run the spy agency in 25 years. He was approved by a vote of 78-15.

Gen. Hayden: "4th Amendment and wrong" http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/05/06.html#a8184

Nominee is held up by Graham Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who sits on the Judiciary Committee and is close to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), is blocking a nominee to the federal bench whom Graham’s friend opposes, Senate sources say. Conservatives and the American Bar Association consider the nominee, William “Jim” Haynes, one of President Bush’s more qualified. But his nomination has languished in committee since the president tapped him for the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in September 2003. Graham’s blocking of Haynes means the senators need not argue against the administration’s treatment of enemy fighters, which might prove...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden's nomination as CIA director won the endorsement of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday in a vote that sets the stage for formal confirmation by the full Senate later this week. ADVERTISEMENT The 15-member committee, which Republicans control by a single vote, approved Hayden's nomination 12-3 after an hour-long closed-door discussion, said Sen. Pat Roberts (news, bio, voting record) of Kansas, the panel's Republican chairman. Hayden, 61, who would replace Porter Goss as CIA director, is widely expected to win confirmation in a Senate vote that could come as early as Thursday....

Breaking News: Senate Intelligence Committee votes 12-3 in favor of the nomination of Gen. Michael Hayden for CIA director.

General Michael Hayden has the cautious support of Senator Carl Levin in Hayden's bid to become the nation's next C-I-A director. Levin is a Michigan Democrat is a key member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which plans to vote on Hayden's nomination tomorrow afternoon. Levin told Detroit radio station W-J-R on Friday, "As of right now, I plan to vote for him." After the Intelligence Committee's approval, the full Senate could approve Hayden before its Memorial Day recess, and he could have a new job as C-I-A director as soon as this week.

Loose lips sink ships By Salena Zito TRIBUNE-REVIEW When is it OK to sacrifice national security for personal gain or political one-upmanship? For the common-sense-challenged, the answer is: "Never." In the years since Sept. 11, an odd assembly of Capitol Hill-types, their staffers and disgruntled federal employees from myriad intelligence agencies have played the "gotcha game" with the White House's methods of protecting the citizenry.

Intelligence: While phone companies deny providing phone lists to the feds, senators grill Bush's nominee for CIA director. After 9-11, would they prefer that government collect our phone numbers or our remains? After a Senate briefing on the National Security Agency's wiretapping of suspected terrorists' calls to their U.S. contacts, Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold said he was "more convinced than ever . . . the program is illegal". NSA Director Michael Hayden, who's been nominated to head the CIA, defended not only the program's legality but its necessity. "When I had to make this personal decision in October 2001," he...

Forgive me for this post, but I have desperately searched for the link at ABC's website pertaining to tonight’s Nightline segment of an interview with an ex/current CIA expert. I believe ABC has withdrawn the link because of this interview that cited the Ozark Caligula’s Administration as the cause of the current CIA woes. I don’t watch too much from the MSM, so I don’t even know the ABC host who conducted the interview. Basically, the CIA expert was asked what has happened to the CIA. In addition to citing low morale, he stated that a substantial portion of the...

After more than six hours of sometimes-tense Senate questioning, the confirmation of Michael Hayden to head the CIA still appeared assured. The four-star Air Force general tried to look forward throughout the long day of grilling, even as senators repeatedly returned to controversies over the eavesdropping work he directed as National Security Agency head from 1999 to 2005. The CIA needs to look ahead, he said. "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," Hayden told the Senate Intelligence Committee at his confirmation...

As a professional intelligence officer, the last people you want to report to are generals and diplomats. And if General Hayden comes to the CIA, we’ll have Mr. Negroponte [a career diplomat] as head of the community, and a general as the head of the CIA. They are not particularly good at taking bad news to the president, in the experience of most intelligence officers. So General Hayden is not the right choice. I also think that it kind of beggars the imagination in the sense that every one of the commissions that investigated 9/11 or Iraq said that we...

The hearings to confirm General Michael Hayden as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency have had some unintentional effects. The culpability of Congress in what almost all observers agree is the dysfunctional nature of our intelligence community is on view. It is evident that Congressional oversight has grown far beyond its original charge of “reigning in” the CIA and has become instead a drag on our intelligence community’s ability to carry out its task of protecting the country from another terrorist attack. The cure has become the new disease. Prior to the 1970’s, intelligence gathering was the exclusive responsibility of...

CIA nominee defends wiretapping Gen Hayden must convince senators to back his nomination The man chosen by US President George W Bush to head the CIA has defended a controversial eavesdropping programme launched after the 9/11 attacks.General Michael Hayden ran the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2001 when Mr Bush approved the wiretapping. He told a Senate committee the wiretaps were legal and used only to monitor those suspected of links to terrorism. But he refused to comment publicly on reports the NSA also collected millions of domestic phone records. He told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee he...

If you thought about it for more than five seconds, it was enough to make you scream. Here was Gen. Michael Hayden, either brave enough or naïve enough to take on the thankless job of heading the CIA, and every newspaper in the country was carrying headlines wondering if a military man should be heading the agency. The question of military subordination to civilian authority is a perennial issue — and one that I personally wrestled with 20 years ago, playing a modest role in crafting the Goldwater-Nichols Act that reformed the Pentagon command structure. But the Hayden controversy wasn't...

Now we know. The Sunday morning CNN program hosted by Wolf Blitzer provided an explanation for at least some of the bizarre behavior in evidence lately in Washington. In response to a video clip of Senator Jon Kyl (Republican of Arizona) making the sensible point that it is "nuts" in a time of war to be disclosing our intelligence sources and methods, former Carter National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski declared that "we are not at war." While he acknowledged that there are serious threats, he suggested that it was fear-mongering to talk about being in a war, a practice used...

Assuming that Michael Hayden is confirmed as CIA director, the agency will be in strong hands--especially if, as rumored, Stephen Kappes is appointed his deputy. General Hayden is the nation's senior intelligence officer (his current boss, John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, is a career diplomat rather than an intelligence professional). Mr. Kappes, a former director of the operations (human intelligence) division of the CIA, is highly respected throughout the intelligence community. These appointments will not "recenter" the beleaguered Central Intelligence Agency, which is being squeezed from three sides: The Defense Department, the FBI and the director of national...

See if you can pick up on the subliminal message being provided us by our media masters:      Subtle, huh?

For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary May 13, 2006 President's Radio Address THE PRESIDENT: Good morning. This week I nominated General Mike Hayden to be the next Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The work of the CIA is essential to the security of the American people. The enemies who struck our Nation on September the 11th, 2001, intend to attack us again, and to defeat them, we must have the best possible intelligence. In Mike Hayden, the men and women of the CIA will have a strong leader who will support them as they work to...

WASHINGTON, May 11, 2006 – The intelligence community has a far more complicated job now, during the global war on terror, than ever before, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday on the "Brian and the Judge Show" on Fox News Radio. Rumsfeld told interviewers Brian Kilmeade and Andrew Napolitano that threats faced in the 21st century pose tremendous challenges for intelligence professionals. Gone are the days when the United States faced a superpower enemy and tracked big armies, navies and air forces around the world. "We're worried about non-state actors getting their hands on & increasingly lethal weapons (and)...

Well, just like clockwork, new Hardball talking nutcase Russ "tiny" Tice is out again and is heading to Congress: "Russ Tice, an NSA intelligence analyst fired last January in the wake of revelations about the agency’s warrantless eavesdropping program, is finally getting his chance to tell what he says are even more explosive secrets to Congress.Rice said that the Senate Armed Services Committee has invited him to testify sometime next week about “very sensitive programs and operations at NSA and DoD (Department of Defense) that likely have violated the law and the constitution.” The ultra-secret NSA operations are called special...

By selecting Air Force General Michael Hayden to replace Porter Goss as CIA director, the president has made many in Congress unhappy. "I think putting a general in charge, regardless of how good Mike is...is going to send the wrong signal," said Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. "You can't have the military control major aspects of intelligence," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Cal), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Mr. Hoekstra and Ms. Feinstein were being disingenuous. They both know that eight of the 16 agencies that comprise the "Intelligence Community" are in the Department...

It’s time for another grueling confirmation battle in Washington, and during an election year you can be sure that no stone will be left unturned into a soapbox. Whether politicians come out for or against General Michael Hayden as new head of the CIA, the only thing we can be sure of is that the trial--I mean, confirmation hearing--will be loud and ugly. The resignation of Porter Goss seemed like a surprise to many at the time, but not in hindsight. He was appointed to head the CIA in the wake of three spectacular foreign intelligence failures. The CIA failed...

If General William “Wild Bill” Donovan were alive today, as Yogi Berra might say, he’d be turning over in his grave. Not allow a military man to head CIA? How ridiculous, considering that a military man – Donovan himself – birthed Central Intelligence. Donovan, a transplanted New York City attorney originally from Buffalo, was a Medal of Honor winner from the Great War (World War I) who founded the outstanding legal firm of Donovan Leisure between the wars. Typical of the Northeast elite of the day – in contrast to present times – he was highly patriotic and fully committed...

At least now we know that the Bush administration's name for spying on Americans without first seeking court approval -- the "terrorist surveillance program" -- isn't an exercise in Orwellian doublespeak after all. It's just a bald-faced lie.

In a telephone interview, Efraim Halevy, Mossad chief from 1998 to 2002 and author of the memoir "Man in the Shadows," offers this advice. The new director "must first work quickly to repair the image of the organization by producing results. He must re-establish credibility at the political level, and this isn't going to be easy because political leaders will be wary of intelligence judgments. He must pass a message of confidence in and respect for the troops. He has to stand up for his people, and not take a back seat while someone else takes the rap. And he...

In one of the boldest new missions, the Pentagon has sharply increased the number of clandestine teams of Defense Intelligence Agency personnel and Special Operations forces conducting secret counterterrorism missions in Iraq, Afghanistan and other foreign countries. Using a broad definition of its current authority to conduct "traditional military activities" and "prepare the battlefield," the Pentagon has dispatched teams to gather information about potential foes well before any shooting starts. In an effort to enhance military interrogations, Mr. Cambone is also overseeing the politically sensitive task of rewriting the Army's field manual. Just last week, he and other top Pentagon...

General Michael Hayden has been nominated to direct the CIA, but his confirmation may have less to do with the CIA than with the formerly Hayden-led National Security Agency (NSA)—or, more specifically, with the NSA’s widely-publicized surveillance of communications between U.S. persons and suspected terrorist organizations. Already, critics point to Hayden’s January 2006 speech at the National Press Club, where his explanation of the rights afforded by the Fourth Amendment was received with great hostility. Unwarranted Criticism 05/10 Pryor Convictions 02/17 Eljahmi: Libya, Yearning to Be Free York: Libby and Fitzgerald: Big Case vs. Little Case Letters: Data Debate Thernstrom:...