CIA nominee under fire over wiretapping
CIA nominee under fire over wiretapping
By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington
Published: May 18 2006 19:51 | Last updated: May 18 2006 23:55. Copyright by The Financial Times
The White House nominee to run the Central Intelligence Agency came under bipartisan fire from politicians on Thursday for keeping members of Congress in the dark about the administration’s controversial warrantless eavesdropping programme.
Senate intelligence committee lawmakers used the nomination hearing of General Michael Hayden, the former National Security Agency director named to replace Porter Goss as CIA director, to ask why the White House waited five years to brief lawmakers fully on the NSA “terrorist surveillance programme”.
Olympia Snowe, a moderate Maine Republican, said the administration’s reluctance to brief Congress on the programme, which Gen Hayden helped create, was breeding “corrosive mistrust”.
The White House partly succeeded this week in reducing congressional criticism by agreeing to brief all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees. But testifying yesterday in uniform, the four-star air force general said he could not say whether the administration would have taken such action had the New York Times not revealed the existence of the programme late last year.
The administration has come under fire over the eavesdropping programme – in which the NSA can intercept the international phone calls and e-mails of Americans where one party is suspected of links to al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups – and more recent claims that the ultra-secret surveillance agency has obtained the phone records of tens of millions of Americans with the help of some US telecommunications companies.
Other committee members pressed Gen Hayden about the need to ensure CIA intelligence assessments remain free from politics. George Tenet, the CIA director in the run-up to the Iraq war, was heavily criticised for allegedly telling President George W. Bush that the case for the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a “slam dunk”.
“Heaven help us if we have more intelligence fiascos similar to those before the Iraq war, when, in the words of the head of British intelligence, the US intelligence was being ‘fixed around the policy’,” said Carl Levin, a senior Democrat on the committee.
Gen Hayden agreed that the agency had to give more prominence to dissenting views in intelligence assessments.
Responding to critics who argue that the Pentagon is encroaching on CIA turf, Gen Hayden said whatever friction there was appeared due more to “inexperience than malice”.
■BellSouth is demanding that USA Today retract a story that claimed the US telecoms company had provided domestic customer call records to the National Security Agency.
By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington
Published: May 18 2006 19:51 | Last updated: May 18 2006 23:55. Copyright by The Financial Times
The White House nominee to run the Central Intelligence Agency came under bipartisan fire from politicians on Thursday for keeping members of Congress in the dark about the administration’s controversial warrantless eavesdropping programme.
Senate intelligence committee lawmakers used the nomination hearing of General Michael Hayden, the former National Security Agency director named to replace Porter Goss as CIA director, to ask why the White House waited five years to brief lawmakers fully on the NSA “terrorist surveillance programme”.
Olympia Snowe, a moderate Maine Republican, said the administration’s reluctance to brief Congress on the programme, which Gen Hayden helped create, was breeding “corrosive mistrust”.
The White House partly succeeded this week in reducing congressional criticism by agreeing to brief all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees. But testifying yesterday in uniform, the four-star air force general said he could not say whether the administration would have taken such action had the New York Times not revealed the existence of the programme late last year.
The administration has come under fire over the eavesdropping programme – in which the NSA can intercept the international phone calls and e-mails of Americans where one party is suspected of links to al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups – and more recent claims that the ultra-secret surveillance agency has obtained the phone records of tens of millions of Americans with the help of some US telecommunications companies.
Other committee members pressed Gen Hayden about the need to ensure CIA intelligence assessments remain free from politics. George Tenet, the CIA director in the run-up to the Iraq war, was heavily criticised for allegedly telling President George W. Bush that the case for the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a “slam dunk”.
“Heaven help us if we have more intelligence fiascos similar to those before the Iraq war, when, in the words of the head of British intelligence, the US intelligence was being ‘fixed around the policy’,” said Carl Levin, a senior Democrat on the committee.
Gen Hayden agreed that the agency had to give more prominence to dissenting views in intelligence assessments.
Responding to critics who argue that the Pentagon is encroaching on CIA turf, Gen Hayden said whatever friction there was appeared due more to “inexperience than malice”.
■BellSouth is demanding that USA Today retract a story that claimed the US telecoms company had provided domestic customer call records to the National Security Agency.
posted by Carlos T Mock at 10:25 AM
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