Senate Overwhelmingly
Confirms General
to Be Director of
C.I.A.
By SCOTT SHANE,
NYTimes on the Web, May 27, 2006
WASHINGTON, May 26 — The
Senate overwhelmingly confirmed Gen. Michael V. Hayden on Friday as director of
the Central Intelligence Agency, despite some senators' criticism of his role in
overseeing a domestic electronic surveillance program.
The 78-to-15 vote showed that General Hayden's popularity on Capitol Hill as an
articulate advocate for the spy agencies outweighed doubts about the legality of
the eavesdropping program he ran as director of the National Security Agency.
The only Republican to vote against confirmation was Senator Arlen Specter of
Pennsylvania, who has said he believes the program violates the law.
Some senators suggested that they had set aside concerns about the program in
part because they believed that General Hayden could restore morale and purpose
at the C.I.A. after the tumultuous 19-month directorship of Porter J. Goss. Mr.
Goss, a former Republican congressman, was forced to resign after failing to
recover from a rocky start in 2004, when his top staff members clashed with
agency veterans.
By the time of the vote, the propriety of having an Air Force general on active
duty take charge of the civilian spy agency, while initially questioned by
several Republicans, had virtually disappeared as an issue.
General Hayden, 61, who has served for 13 months as principal deputy to John D.
Negroponte, the director of national intelligence, told senators he did not
intend to remain on active military duty after he left the C.I.A. job, easing
concerns that he might have a motive to kowtow to the Pentagon.
Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, said on the Senate floor on Thursday
night that General Hayden had demonstrated "independence and objectivity and a
willingness to speak truth to power." Those qualities were especially
necessary at the C.I.A., Mr. Levin said, because of what he described as the
Bush administration's distortion of intelligence before the war in Iraq.
Mr. Levin said that despite "unanswered questions" about the eavesdropping
program and its legal status, "the legal opinions about this program are not
General Hayden's."
Since President Bush and two attorneys general had approved the program, he
said, General Hayden could not be expected to question its legality.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, said that while he
respected General Hayden and thought he had "learned important lessons" from the
prewar intelligence on Iraq, the general should not be confirmed.
"I cannot support General Hayden's nomination in light of the very serious
questions about the scope and legality of the N.S.A. domestic surveillance
programs that he helped design, implement and defend," Mr. Kennedy said in a
statement.
As the confirmation vote took place, Vice President Dick Cheney again defended
the surveillance program, which, without warrants, monitors international phone
calls and e-mail messages of Americans and others in the United States who are
believed to be linked to Al Qaeda.
Mr. Cheney, who has presided over most of the briefings that have been held on
the program for selected members of Congress, said in his commencement address
at the United States Naval Academy that the eavesdropping "is conducted in a
manner that fully protects the civil liberties of the American people."
The vice president drew applause with his assurance that President Bush "will
not relent in the effort to track the enemies of the United States with every
legitimate tool."
The easy confirmation of General Hayden underscored the fact that Congressional
critics of the surveillance program have questioned only its legal basis, not
its intelligence value. Even after USA Today reported this month that the
agency had collected data on millions of Americans' phone calls, few members of
Congress said the agency should stop such activities.
The administration has thwarted several efforts by the program's critics to
subject it to scrutiny.
The Federal Communications Commission declined to investigate because the
program was so secret, and officials in the ethics office of the Justice
Department were denied the necessary security clearances to conduct a planned
review.
Justice Department lawyers cited the "state secrets privilege" to seek dismissal
of a suit against AT&T for cooperating with the National Security Agency, and
government lawyers have told a New York court that they will do the same in a
lawsuit filed by the Center for Constitutional Rights, a civil liberties group,
challenging the surveillance program. Once rarely used, the privilege has
been used repeatedly by the Bush administration to block litigation related to
intelligence activities.
Senators Specter and Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, have proposed a
bill to bring all N.S.A. eavesdropping on Americans under court supervision.
It would ban federal spending for electronic monitoring that does not comply
with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and would establish faster, more
flexible procedures for getting warrants to track potential terrorists.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which on Friday expressed concern about
General Hayden's "troubling record" at the security agency, supports the
Specter-Feinstein bill. Its prospects for passage are uncertain.
Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Annapolis, Md., for
this article.
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