Statement of Senator Carl Levin in Support of The Nomination of General Michael Hayden

The CIA must at all costs avoid a repeat of the pre-Iraq War intelligence fiasco, when CIA Director Tenet said the case for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was a “slam dunk,” and then proceeded to distort and exaggerate underlying intelligence in order to support the Administration’s Iraq policy. The CIA needs an independent Director who will speak truth to power and provide objective assessments of a professional intelligence community, and not try to please policy makers by telling them what they want to hear.

General Hayden not only promises to be independent and objective. General Hayden has proven he has the backbone to do so.

For instance, General Hayden is perhaps the only high-level official who has criticized the Department of Defense policy office of Douglas Feith. That office, before the war began, undertook to use a direct pipeline to the White House for distorted intelligence assessments, bypassing mechanisms in place which are intended to produce balanced, objective assessments.

General Hayden has done more than speak openly of his concerns about the Feith operation. He acted upon them by placing a cautionary disclaimer on the reporting of his agency relative to the links that Feith and others were trying to create between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, so that his agency’s reports could not be misused for that purpose.

Again, speaking truth to power, General Hayden showed independence when he stood up against the positions being urged by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld during the recent reforms of the intelligence community.

As to the surveillance activities of the National Security Agency, which General Hayden formerly led, many of us have concerns. But those concerns as to the legality and as to the decision to implement the alleged collection of phone numbers called by millions of Americans should be placed at the doorstep of the Attorney General and the White House.

I am one of those being briefed on the program, and I have a number of concerns. But my concerns are with the legality and privacy intrusions and effectiveness of the program authorized by the President, and given the legal imprimatur of the Attorney General, I know of no evidence that General Hayden acted beyond the program’s guidelines as set up by the President and the Attorney General.

I will vote for General Hayden’s confirmation.