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| Home Front: Politix |
| Hayden defends NSA program |
| 2006-01-24 |
| On a rainy night in August, a black-tie crowd gathered at the National Security Agency for a tribute to Gen. Michael V. Hayden, who had led the eavesdropping agency for six years. The corridor to the banquet room at agency headquarters in Fort Meade, Md., was lined with favorable press clippings, in part the results of his courting of writers who covered the secret world of intelligence. But now General Hayden finds himself on the defensive. With the vocal backing of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, General Hayden, now the principal deputy director of national intelligence, has been speaking out on why the agency has conducted eavesdropping on American soil without court warrants. On Monday, General Hayden, a 60-year-old Air Force general, addressed the National Press Club, trying to explain the highly classified program without revealing too many details. He even stuck around for a half-hour of questions, listening to a pastor who said that "the faith communities are outraged" by the N.S.A. program and an anti-Bush activist who demanded to know whether his group's telephone calls and e-mail messages were a target. (The general offered an indirect reply, saying the program was narrowly focused on terrorism suspects: "This is about Al Qaeda.") Among those present at the press club was the author of two major books on the agency, James Bamford, whose shifting view of the speaker captured the difficulty of General Hayden's position. Mr. Bamford faced only hostility from the agency when he researched his first N.S.A. book, "The Puzzle Palace," published in 1982. But for his second book, "Body of Secrets," General Hayden offered extensive assistance, granting multiple interviews and even arranging for a book signing on agency grounds. When the book was published in early 2001, Mr. Bamford listed General Hayden first in his acknowledgments, thanking him for "having the courage to open the agency's door a crack." In public appearances, including 2001 testimony before the European Parliament, he defended General Hayden and the N.S.A. against those who believed it was a rogue agency operating outside the law. But last week, Mr. Bamford joined a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union challenging the program's legality and asking the courts to shut it down. "I'm sort of mystified by Hayden at this point," Mr. Bamford said in an interview. "It was a big shock to me to find out that he was doing eavesdropping without warrants." If Mr. Bamford takes the issue personally, General Hayden suggested in his remarks Monday, so do he and N.S.A. employees who feel accused of spying on their fellow citizens. "I'm disappointed, I guess, that perhaps the default response for some is to assume the worst," General Hayden said. "I'm trying to communicate to you that the people who are doing this, O.K., go shopping in Glen Burnie and their kids play soccer in Laurel," he added, referring to suburbs near N.S.A. headquarters in Maryland. "And they know the law," he continued. "They know American privacy better than the average American, and they're dedicated to it." Charles G. Boyd, a retired Air Force general who has known him for years, said he thought General Hayden was speaking out on the N.S.A. program "because he believes what he did was right. He's under tremendous pressure, because he's being targeted for what he did to support his president, and with the assurances of the Justice Department that it was legal." For a man who has devoted his career to secret work, General Hayden has always been strikingly unafraid of the limelight. Son of a blue-collar family in Pittsburgh - the Steelers' playoff triumphs are a bright spot in a bleak season for him - he has a knack for reducing the complexities of intelligence to straightforward English that has served him well on Capitol Hill and at the White House. Appalled at the portrayal of the N.S.A. as a lawless, even murderous agency in the 1998 film "Enemy of the State," General Hayden set out after becoming director the next year to reshape that image. He granted a few television crews the rare opportunity to film behind the agency's barbed-wire fences, granted numerous interviews and even invited some reporters to dinners at his house. The resulting coverage countered the notion that the N.S.A. was a shadowy menace to ordinary citizens. General Hayden's efforts to modernize the agency got generally sympathetic coverage, despite cost overruns and other setbacks. His message that the agency scrupulously avoided invading Americans' privacy won plaudits from members of Congress. After The New York Times disclosed the eavesdropping program last month, General Hayden quickly took a prominent role in defending it. His previous success in persuading outsiders that the N.S.A. operated strictly in accordance with laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires warrants for eavesdropping in the United States, caused the revelations to resound with particular force in Washington. Polls on the program show mixed views among Americans. But if General Hayden is concerned that coverage of the N.S.A. eavesdropping has eroded his image-building efforts, he can take no comfort from last Saturday's television schedule: ABC showed "Enemy of the State" in prime time. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #2 I didn't read the entire transcript, but in what I did read the questions from the press indicated to me that they are stuck on 9/10 and clueless about intelligence. |
| Posted by: Crath Sheregum2106 2006-01-24 10:35 |
| #1 I read the transcript yesterday and I really hope the press learned something but I doubt it. The most glaring fact that the press will miss is that Gen Hayden pointed out that "not a single NSA employed complained to the IG about this activity." So that should tell you that ALL or most of this innuendo is coming from outside the intelligence community or someone inside broke a lot of protocols in place to safeguard intelligence. If the latter is true I hope they find a nice cell for the whistleblower/patriot to stay in for a long time. Also it was not a far fight putting General Hayden against the puny minded and DNC talking points loaded press, he shredded all their charges with FACTS. Kudos General! |
| Posted by: Cyber Sarge 2006-01-24 10:22 |