Fergie's Tech Blog

Ex-NSA Chief Likely Successor at CIA

General Hayden's background in communications intercept will certainly work against his confirmation as the Director of Central Intelligence.

You can be sure that questions will certainly arise during his confirmation process with regards to the current debate on the warrantless wiretapping policies championed by the Bush administration.

Thomas E. Ricks and Dafna Linzer write in The Washington Post:

When Gen. Michael V. Hayden took over as director of the National Security Agency in 1999, he faced a huge organization that was overwhelmingly staffed by aging white men who had spent their careers specializing in the intricacies of the Soviet Union and other aspects of the Cold War. He set out to overhaul the communications interception service and move it into the 21st century.

He came out of that anti-Soviet mold: While attached to the U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria in the mid-1980s, he would dress in workingman's clothes, ride trains and, with his cap pulled over his eyes, pretend to doze while eavesdropping on Bulgarian soldiers heading home on leave. Yet, Hayden managed to reinvent himself, and has gone on to thrive in the post-Sept. 11 world, even though he hardly would be considered an expert in terrorism or the Middle East, the two major problems on which today's Central Intelligence Agency is focused.

posted by Fergie @ 5/07/2006 07:20:00 AM