Today, the President pushed for a
quick confirmation of his nominee for CIA Director, General Michael Hayden. Various Senators have already come out and rubber-stamped the President's choice. I must admit, this rush to judgment seems paradoxical since program after program is being exposed that should stall--if not kill--the General's nomination.
First, it was the "terrorist surveillance program" that was represented by Hayden as being limited in nature. We still don't know who initiated the program. Reports suggest that it may have been Hayden who unilaterally implemented the extrajudicial spying program, before executive authorization.
Now, we learn that Hayden was the architect of a much broader program, one that has cataloged billions of calls made by innocent Americans.
While Hayden's supporters shrug off this massive data collection, they ignore a critical question: did Hayden break the law? And if so, how can they overlook that and vote for his confirmation?
The fact is that, depending on the exact contours of the program, this program may have already been banned by Congress. And if so, Hayden's resurrection of that program should cast the death blow to any nomination.
I wrote about the Total Information Awareness program earlier this year. It was (is?) a data-mining program whose elements sound frightening familiar in light of current events:
The Pentagon is constructing a computer system that could create a vast electronic dragnet, searching for personal information as part of the hunt for terrorists around the globe -- including the United States.
As the director of the effort, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, has described the system in Pentagon documents and in speeches, it will provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials with instant access to information from Internet mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel documents, without a search warrant.
Congress was so concerned about the privacy issues involved, it abruptly banned the program in 2003, pulling all of its funding. Not only did Congress ban the TIA program, it also declared "any successor program" similar in nature to be illegal. Yet the technology used to data-mine was not destroyed, but transfered over to other agencies for "foreign intelligence" purposes.
General Hayden was questioned about the now illegal TIA program by Senator Wyden (D-OR) at a hearing earlier this year:
A similarly revealing sparring session came when Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, pressed the intelligence officials about whether a controversial Pentagon data-mining program called Total Information Awareness had been effectively transferred to the intelligence agencies after being shut down by Congress.
Mr. Negroponte and the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, both said they did not know. Then came the turn of Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who headed N.S.A. for six years before becoming the principal deputy director of national intelligence last spring.
"Senator," General Hayden said, "I'd like to answer in closed session."
It's not clear what Hayden testified to in closed session. But whatever Hayden said, it has caused Senator Wyden to now state that he has concerns about Hayden's credibility.
With so many unanswered questions, both about the scope of the NSA's domestic actives (which seem to get broader and broader with each news report) and about Hayden's role in implementing these programs, it's not surprising the President is rushing Hayden's confirmation, no questions asked. Day after day, it appears that General Hayden implemented a program so anathema to our traditional notions of privacy and limited government that it shocks the American conscience. The Senate should break with Bush administration practice and demand the facts first, before it promotes the President's nominee to a higher office of public trust. Until all the facts are known, General Hayden should not be confirmed.