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Analysis: The Search For Intelligence

Council on Foreign Relations

May 8, 2006
Prepared by: Michael Moran

Writing recently in Foreign Affairs, Paul Pillar, the CIA's former senior intelligence official for the Middle East and South Asia, says "the most serious problem with U.S. intelligence today is that its relationship with the policymaking process is broken and badly needs repair." President Bush on Monday made the case for Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, currently head of the National Security Agency, to be chief of the Central Intelligence Agency. But dissent rose quickly, including from within the ranks of important Republicans in Congress (Times of London) whose support Hayden would need in upcoming confirmation hearings.

Hayden’s knowledge of the turf, from a career in military intelligence that led to the top NSA post in 1999, is widely conceded even by those opposed to his nomination, as this BBC profile notes. (His official White House bio is here). Hayden’s candidacy, however, cuts across two contentious issues: the controversial and recently revealed NSA wiretaps of American citizens following 9/11, and the military’s control of large parts of the sprawling U.S. intelligence system.

The wiretap issue, explained in this CFR Background Q&A, is politically fraught. The Democratic minority in Congress, frustrated at being unable to control the agenda of hearings and investigations, now has an opportunity to ask tough questions of the man directly in charge of NSA wiretapping. Peter Hoekstra, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, says he opposes Hayden’s nomination for precisely this reason (MSNBC.com). “The debate in the Senate may end up being about the terrorist surveillance program and not about the future of the CIA or the intelligence community, which is exactly where the debate needs to be.” The question of whether such wiretapping is legal is explored in this Congressional Research Service report, and in this detailed series in the New Yorker.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.