General Hayden’s Confirmation Hearing Begins
You can watch it here.
He seems to be a tough talker. Looks to me like the man for the job.
Hayden is at the center of the debate over the Bush administration’s controversial domestic surveillance programs, which allowed the National Security Agency under Hayden’s leadership to eavesdrop without warrants on telephone calls when one party was overseas and suspected of terrorism.
In a statement prepared for delivery, Hayden complained that intelligence-gathering has become “football in American political discourse.”
“For the past few years, the intelligence community and the CIA have taken an inordinate number of hits, some of them fair, many of them not,” Hayden was expected to say in prepared remarks at his Senate confirmation hearing.
His reception by the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday was expected to be much different than a year ago, when the panel approved him unanimously to be the nation’s first principal deputy director of national intelligence.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., welcomed the four-star general and said the debate has been focused not on his ability to lead the CIA “but rather the debate is focused almost entirely” on controversy over NSA surveillance and eavesdropping programs.
Roberts said he had been to the NSA for briefings on the program. “I have never seen a program more tightly run and closely scrutinized,” he said.
Hayden’s prepared remarks stated that, if confirmed, “I would reaffirm the CIA’s proud culture of risk-taking.”
Hayden also was expected to say he will give the Bush administration the unvarnished truth, a reference to criticisms of the intelligence community in the run-up to the Iraq war.
“When it comes to speaking truth to power, I will lead CIA analysts by example. I will _ as I expect every analyst will _ always give our nation’s leaders the best analytic judgment,” his remarks read.
See the video.
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Posted by Jay on May 18, 2006 9:28 am
» Filed Under News, War On Terror
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One Response to “General Hayden’s Confirmation Hearing Begins”
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Syndicate Me
I do not like an active military officer in charge of another branch of government. The active military is mandated to take orders from their superiors. He needs to take the bars off so he does not have a conflict of interest.