WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush's CIA director-nominee, Gen. Michael Hayden, is to face what undoubtedly will be the toughest public questioning of his 37- year government career at a Senate confirmation hearing this morning. Hayden is at the center of the debate over the Bush administration's controversial domestic surveillance programs, which allowed the National Security Agency under Hayden's leadership to eavesdrop without warrants on telephone calls when one party was overseas and suspected of terrorism.
In a statement prepared for delivery, Hayden complained that intelligence-gathering has become "football in American political discourse."
"For the past few years, the intelligence community and the CIA have taken an inordinate number of hits, some of them fair, many of them not," Hayden was expected to say in prepared remarks at his Senate confirmation hearing.
His reception by the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday was expected to be much different than a year ago, when the panel approved him unanimously to be the nation's first principal deputy director of national intelligence.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., welcomed the four-star general and said the debate has been focused not on his ability to lead the CIA "but rather the debate is focused almost entirely" on controversy over NSA surveillance and eavesdropping programs.
Roberts said he had been to the NSA for briefings on the program. "I have never seen a program more tightly run and closely scrutinized," he said.
Hayden's prepared remarks stated that, if confirmed, "I would reaffirm the CIA's proud culture of risk-taking."
Hayden also was expected to say he will give the Bush administration the unvarnished truth, a reference to criticisms of the intelligence community in the run-up to the Iraq war.
"When it comes to speaking truth to power, I will lead CIA analysts by example. I will—as I expect every analyst will—always give our nation's leaders the best analytic judgment," his remarks read.
Roberts said surveillance programs have stopped terrorist attacks.
But Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan complained about the CIA's recent past.
Levin suggested that in the run-up to Iraq, intelligence had been manipulated to support the administration's desire to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
"The next director must right this ship and restore the CIA to its critically important position," he said.
Levin dismissed administration assertions that the privacy of Americans was not being compromised in surveillance programs.
"When Stephen Hadley, the president's national security adviser, says that it's hard to find a privacy issue here, I can't buy that," Levin said. "It's not hard to see how Americans could feel that their privacy has been intruded upon if the government has... a database of phone numbers calling and being called by tens of millions of Americans who are not suspected of any wrongdoing."
He cited a USA Today report that the NSA had compiled a massive data base of phone records of ordinary Americans.
The need for good intelligence "is surely as great now as it has ever been," he said.
Some have questioned whether it is appropriate to have someone like Hayden, with his lengthy resume in military intelligence, directing the civilian spies at the CIA at a time when the intelligence community is increasingly dominated by the Pentagon. In closed door meetings with senators, Hayden, 61, indicated a willingness to retire from the Air Force if necessary.
Much of the hearing was expected to focus on a recent newspaper report that the NSA was able to analyze the calling records of millions of ordinary Americans.
To help smooth Hayden's path, the administration reversed course after five months and decided this week to provide more information to Congress about the ultra-secret NSA's activities. That includes full briefings for the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.
President Bush chose Hayden as CIA director-nominee after consultation with Hayden's current boss, National Intelligence Director John Negroponte. Outgoing CIA Director Porter Goss announced his retirement earlier this month after disputes with Hayden and Negroponte about the CIA's direction.
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