THE HAYDEN CHARADE
    ("Big Brother" is Watching All of Us to
    See Who is a "Good Citizen" or "Not")
    By Marjorie Cohn
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective
    Monday, 22 May 2006

    [Copyright (c) 2006 in the
    U.S.A. and Internationally
    by t r u t h o u t (.org)
    and/or Marjorie Cohn.
    All rights reserved.]

    In his testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, General Michael Hayden promised to promote autonomy and objectivity in the CIA if confirmed as its new director. Hayden assured the senators he would provide "hard-edged assessments" and be tolerant of dissenting views on intelligence matters. "When it comes to speaking truth to power," Hayden declared, "I will lead CIA analysts by example. I will... always give our nation's leaders the best analytic judgment."

    The evidence, however, suggests precisely the opposite. As head of the National Security Agency, this 4-star general walked in lockstep with his commander in chief, George W. Bush. Hayden helped designed the illegal program of spying on our telephone calls and emails and then repeatedly defended it when interrogated by the senators at his hearing, citing "legal" opinions of Bush's hired guns in the Justice Department.

    Rather than providing the White House with a neutral assessment of Iran's nuclear capabilities, we can expect Hayden to give Bush the "intelligence" the president seeks to justify his war on Iran. Things did not run as smoothly as Bush would have wished under the last two CIA directors. He had to dispatch Dick Cheney to the CIA several times to furnish the "intelligence" he needed to rationalize his war on Iraq.

    Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) asked Hayden if he was "comfortable" with under secretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith's personal intelligence-analysis cell, which hyped a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. Hayden said he wasn't comfortable with it and protested that he wasn't aware of a lot of the activity going on leading up to the Iraq war.

    But when questioned about Colin Powell's use of false WMD information to support his infamous appearance before the United Nations in the run-up the war, Hayden made a telling admission.

    In response to Levin's question about the legal standard for declassifying information in the public interest, Hayden said, "We used that in Powell's speech. George [Tenet] had to call me for three tapes." Hayden was right in the middle of the preparation for Powell's disingenuous presentation.

    Hayden, who will be the third director of the CIA in two years, will salute and march to Bush's agenda. The nation's chief spook will shape the "intelligence" to fit Bush's policy of regime change in Iran.

    Hayden vowed to "reaffirm CIA's proud culture of risk-taking and excellence." Not one of the senators, from either party, interrogated Hayden about the CIA's checkered past.

    There was no mention of the CIA's 1953 coup that ousted Iran's democratically-elected president Mohammed Mosadeq and replaced him with the US-friendly tyrant, the Shah Reza Pahlavi. The 1979 Iranian revolution lead to the overthrow of the Shah's regime and the rise of Islamic fascism under the leadership of the Ayatollah Khomeini, providing a model of theocracy for much of the Muslim world.

    Absent was any reference in the hearing to the CIA's support for Osama bin Laden in his fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The defeat of the USSR there, and the rise of the Mujahedin, enabled the Taliban to come to power....

    Today we are reaping what the CIA sowed in Iran and Afghanistan.

    None of the senators asked Hayden about the CIA's torture manuals, which have been utilized by myriad Latin American dictators to repress their people.

    Much of the CIA's risk-taking is nothing to be proud of. There is no indication that Hayden will bring new integrity to the CIA.

    Hayden's defense of the NSA's warrantless surveillance program was incredible. When questioned about the Fourth Amendment's standard for searches and seizures, Hayden assured the senators that he had consulted with his relatives who are in law school for legal advice.

    The Fourth Amendment says the people shall be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures, and that no warrant shall issue but upon probable cause. For more than a century, the Supreme Court has held that in order to be reasonable, a search or seizure must be supported by a search warrant based on probable cause and issued by a judge. Only when certain narrowly-defined exceptions apply can the government dispense with a warrant.

(Continued below.)