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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:...

......... Regrettably, reform at the CIA is now dead. The only real chance opened immediately after 9/11 and closed when President Bush decided to retain the services of George Tenet, who always remained close and sympathetic to the operations directorate. Ms. Harman, many other prominent Democrats, and the anti-Bush press have put another nail into the clandestine service's coffin by rallying around an organization that desperately needs to be radically deconstructed. However tepidly or lazily Mr. Goss approached his work, he and his abrasive minions ought to be complimented for at least firing somebody. Given the history of the CIA,...

WASHINGTON, May 9, 2006 – The defense secretary and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said today they endorse President Bush's nomination of Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden as CIA director. Bush nominated Hayden to the post yesterday to replace Peter Goss. "In my view, Mike Hayden is a true professional, and he'll do an excellent job for the country," Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in response to a reporter's question at today's Pentagon news briefing. "I've known him for about 17 years, and he is just a superb officer who is a tremendous professional," agreed Navy Adm....

Over at War Stories, Kaplan seems mildly approving of Gen. Hayden but frets about the NSA's "domestic eavesdropping" particularly in light of his answer to a Knight-Ridder reporter's pestering him about the Fourth Amendment. The General said he was square with the Fourth since it required searches to be "reasonable," while the reporter seemed to think it required a warrant for any and all searches, a view Kaplan endores. However, Hayden is right and Kaplan and the reporter wrong. The Fourth Amendment requires that all searches be "reasonable" and Expand... also makes "probable cause" supported by a sworn statement the...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Steve Kappes, a recently retired CIA insider, has been offered the No. 2 slot at the spy agency, sources told CNN, to reassure the CIA operations community about Gen. Michael Hayden's appointment as director as well as ease concerns about that nominee's military ties. The decision to tap Kappes is also seen as a move aimed at members of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee who have raised doubts about Hayden. Kappes was a civilian operations officer who reportedly was forced out of the CIA by Porter Goss' associates after Goss became director in 2004. Intelligence analysts and...

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday he supports the nomination of a military general as the head of the CIA, and said the Pentagon is not trying to take more control of intelligence matters. "There's no power play taking place in Washington," Rumsfeld told Pentagon reporters, calling talk of bureaucratic turf fights between civilian intelligence agencies and military leaders "theoretical conspiracies" and "all off the mark."

PRESIDENT BUSH'S nomination of Gen. Michael V. Hayden as CIA director represents, above all, an attempt to push forward badly needed reforms of the intelligence community -- changes not made by the agency's outgoing chief, Porter J. Goss. For that reason, among others, Gen. Hayden's nomination deserves a careful and fair review by Congress. While he is a four-star Air Force general, he is also one of the most experienced and well-regarded managers in the intelligence community, credited with reorienting the mammoth National Security Agency after the end of the Cold War. As deputy to the new director of national...

The President spent the weekend in Washington, on Saturday he Delivered the Commencement Address at Oklahoma State University and later in the day attended a family wedding in Washington. On Sunday as is his practise when in Washington he attended St John's, the first lady travelled to Costa Rica to attend today's swearing in of Costa Rica's President-elect Oscar Arias. The Vice President concluded his Eastern European trip over the weekend concluding it in Croatia. Today the President announced General Michael Hayden as his nominee to head the CIA The President also made a statement about the humanitarian disaster in...

The reasons for Porter Goss’s abrupt departure as CIA director are shrouded in mystery. But its effect is not. It gives the impression that there has been a coup by the CIA insiders who have waged a covert policy war against the Bush administration for five years. The White House must act quickly to correct the impression that the renegades have won. The CIA is supposed to work for the president. It was created in 1948 to be the president’s civilian, non-partisan, non-policy intelligence arm. Its job is to provide an accurate picture of facts and trends so that decision...

Kerry "troubled" by Hayden CIA nomination May 8, 2006 NASHUA, N.H. --Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry says he's troubled and has "serious reservations" about President Bush's nomination of General Michael Hayden to be director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Kerry says his concerns stem from Hayden's involvement in the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program, which Hayden used to oversee as the former head of the National Security Agency. Kerry made the comments to reporters after speaking at a convention of New Hampshire's professional fire fighters association in Nashua. Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden also is scheduled to speak at the convention. Biden...

WASHINGTON -- Michael Hayden doesn't run from a fight, which is just what seemingly awaits the 61-year-old Air Force general, who was nominated Monday as new CIA chief. Weeks after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the then-head of the National Security Agency was telling intelligence-gathering teams how they would fight back: White House-approved electronic monitoring, without court orders, of the international calls and e-mails of people in the United States when terrorism was suspected. When the New York Times disclosed the program in December, triggering an uproar over its legality, Hayden plunged right in, defending the surveillance in a...

The pending appointment of General Michael Hayden as director of the Central Intelligence Agency will pave the way for the agency's emasculation and for the Pentagon to assume full authority over paramilitary operations. A senior intelligence community official yesterday said the director of national intelligence, John Negroponte, has indicated "he is willing to give up covert operations to the Pentagon." The source also pointed out that the Pentagon has requested increased budget authority to prepare for the acquisition of the CIA's targeted military operations. The intelligence overhaul of 2004 envisioned that they would remain under the purview of the CIA....

Probable CIA pick draws fire By staff and wire reports Monday, May 8, 2006 WASHINGTON -- Even before President Bush has named his choice to take over the CIA, the Air Force general who is the front-runner drew fire Sunday from lawmakers in the president's own party who say a military man should not lead the civilian spy agency. The criticism of the expected choice of Gen. Michael Hayden to head the CIA came from some influential Republicans in Congress as well as from Democrats.

WASHINGTON - Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden will be named on Monday as the next chief of the CIA, officials said, as the White House began battling back against criticism that a military officer would lead the civilian spy agency. Recognizing concerns about military leadership of the CIA, a civilian agency, the White House plans to move aside the agency's No. 2 official, Vice Admiral Albert Calland III, who took over as deputy director less than a year ago. Other personnel changes also are likely, a senior administration official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because the changes are not...

WASHINGTON - The nomination of Gen. Michael V. Hayden to take over the CIA would trigger a fresh battle over the secret warrantless surveillance program he oversaw on behalf of President Bush, a debate that could help shape the contours of the fall midterm congressional elections, officials in both parties said yesterday. Barring a change of heart, aides expect Bush to name Hayden tomorrow as his choice to succeed CIA director Porter J. Goss, who resigned under pressure Friday. Hayden, a former director of the National Security Agency and now deputy director of national intelligence, has become the most forceful...

Hayden considered pride of (Pittsburgh) North Side By David M. Brown TRIBUNE-REVIEW Sunday, May 7, 2006 Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the highest-ranking intelligence officer in the U.S. armed forces who could be President Bush's choice to head the Central Intelligence Agency, is a highly intelligent and hard-working man who learned valuable lessons growing up in Pittsburgh, according to former teachers and a classmate.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The general considered the Bush administration's likely choice to become CIA director would be the "wrong person at the wrong place at the wrong time," the Republican head of the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee said on Sunday. Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency, has been widely cited in the media as the President George W. Bush's expected pick to lead the CIA following the ouster of CIA director Porter Goss. "We should not have a military person leading a civilian agency at this time," Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, told "Fox...

ALL the ingredients for a spy thriller involving prostitutes, poker, a congressman called Randy and parties at the legendary Watergate complex may lie behind the sudden resignation of Porter Goss as director of the CIA last Friday. The saga has already been named “Hookergate” and the CIA is buzzing with rumours that there is more to Goss’s departure than meets the eye. The timing is certainly curious, coming hard on the heels of the CIA’s confirmation last week that Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, the number three in the nation’s spy centre who was hand-picked by Goss, had attended poker games at...

The nomination of Gen. Michael V. Hayden to take over the CIA would trigger a fresh battle over the secret warrantless surveillance program he oversaw on behalf of President Bush, a debate that could help shape the contours of the fall midterm congressional elections, officials in both parties said yesterday. Barring a change of heart, aides expect Bush to name Hayden tomorrow as his choice to succeed CIA director Porter J. Goss, who resigned under pressure Friday. Hayden, a former director of the National Security Agency and now deputy director of national intelligence, has become the most forceful defender of...

CNN just broke on Anderson Cooper 360 that former NSA Chief General Hayden will replace Goss as the head of the CIA. It hasn't been announced yet by the president though.

President George W. Bush stunned Washington on Friday by accepting the resignation of CIA Director Porter J. Goss, and Republican sources told TIME that the White House plans to name his replacement on Monday: Air Force General Michael V. Hayden, who as Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence has been a visible and aggressive defender of the administration's controversial eavesdropping program. His nomination is sure to reignite the battle over the program on Capitol Hill, where one House Democrat promises "a partisan food fight" during the confirmation process. Though Hayden, who has a close rapport with Vice President Cheney, has...

Last week, John Walker Lindh  petitioned the president to commute his 20-year sentence for fighting with the Taliban, imposed in 2002.  It’s a shame that this pampered child of Marin County is sitting in a cell for something as trivial as treason. Under a plea bargain, Walker Lindh (AKA: Abdul Hamid, AKA: Sulayman Al-Lindh) pleaded guilty to supplying services to the Taliban regime and carrying explosives for  Afghanistan’s former rulers.Which is like to saying that Benedict Arnold supplied services to George III. Johnny Jihad trained in an al-Qaeda camp – where he learned to fire an AK-47 and rubbed elbows...

REMARKS BYGENERAL MICHAEL V. HAYDEN PRINCIPAL DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCEANDFORMER DIRECTOR OF THE NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY ADDRESS TO THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUBWHAT AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE & ESPECIALLY THE NSA HAVE BEEN DOING TO DEFEND THE NATION NATIONAL PRESS CLUBWASHINGTON, D.C. 10:00 A.M. ESTMONDAY, JANUARY 23, 2006MR. HILL: Good morning. My name is Keith Hill. I'm an editor/writer with the Bureau of National Affairs, Press Club governor and vice chair of the club's Newsmaker Committee, and I'll be today's moderator. Today, we have General Michael Hayden, principal deputy director of National Intelligence with the Office of National Intelligence, who will talk...

Hayden Delivers Impassioned Defense of NSA Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency, delivered a brilliant and heartfelt speech on the NSA's international terrorist surveillance program at the National Press Club today. You can, and should, read it all here. What follows are just a few of the many highlights: In the days after 9/11, NSA was using its authorities and its judgment to appropriately respond to the most catastrophic attack on the homeland in the history of the nation. That shouldn't be a headline, but as near as I can tell, these actions on my...

Bill Clinton charms Indian actress Indian actress Diana Hayden was pleasantly surprised when former US President Bill Clinton recognised her during a recent visit to India, a newspaper has reported. The two first met at the White House in 1997 when he was still the US president and she was the reigning Miss World. They met again on September 7 when Clinton was the guest-of-honour at a reception in the northern Indian city of Lucknow, the Times of India newspaper reported. Hayden bumped into Clinton at the reception and asked if he remembered her. He replied: "How can a man...

...Richard Nixon, amid a similar low ebb of popularity with Vietnam, gave a famous speech in 1969. This was the year after the Tet offensive, which caused Walter Cronkite's famous Hagel-like throwing in of the towel. In that speech Nixon described a "great silent majority" in America. The idea, of course, was that the daily media attention commanded by the antiwar movement was missing a class of Americans who sat home seething at the behavior of the protesters. Today, because of the Internet, no one has to seethe in silence, as wired activists in both parties proved in 2004's high-tech...