It's a bipartisan truism that one of the most dangerous spots on Capitol Hill is the area between Sen. Ron Wyden and a TV camera. Last week Gen. Michael Hayden had to march into this no-man's land, and it wasn't pretty. After Wyden welcomed the would-be CIA boss to the Senate Intelligence Committee's confirmation hearing, he blasted Hayden: "General, having evaluated your words, I now have a difficult time with your credibility."
It was the hearing's double-take moment. There were, of course, legitimate issues to take up with the general -- the National Security Agency terrorist surveillance program and the proper number of congressional intel committee members to be consulted on the most secret spy programs -- and Wyden touched on these. But nobody's really ever challenged Hayden's credibility. On the contrary, he has a bipartisan reputation as a brilliant, honest professional.
Until Wyden's blast. What did the Oregon Democrat know about Hayden's credibility that we didn't?
Happily, Wyden got right down to specifics. Unhappily, his specifics fail to stand up to scrutiny.
"On the wiretapping program in 2001," Wyden said, "you were told by the president's lawyers that you had authority to listen to Americans' phone calls. But a year later, in 2002, you testified that you had no authority to listen to Americans' phone calls in the United States unless you had enough evidence for a warrant. But you have since admitted you were wiretapping Americans."
Let's unpack this: Lawyers in the Justice Department and the White House -- and Hayden's NSA lawyers -- did tell him in 2001 he had the authority to listen to Americans' phone calls. But only if those Americans' calls were from or to al-Qaida folks oversees. When he told Congress the next year that he had no authority to listen to Americans' phone calls here without a warrant, he was referring to exclusively domestic calls. Should he have stopped and told the world that NSA had a secret program -- briefed to key Republican and Democrat lawmakers -- that listened to the international calls of al-Qaida terrorists? Not unless he wanted to prove he was unqualified to head the CIA or other spy agencies.
Wyden's second specific involves Hayden's statements after the NSA surveillance program became public last December. He faults the general for claiming the wiretapping program was limited to domestic-to-international calls when we now have press reports that NSA was amassing a "huge data base of domestic calls." Wasn't this misleading?
Let's first look at the general's reply. He said he chose his words "very carefully" and "pointedly and consciously down-shifted the language I was using.
"When I was talking about [there not being] a drift net over . . . cities," he said, "I switched from the word 'communications' to the much more specific and unarguably accurate 'conversations.' "
This is exactly what he did in his January 2006 remarks to the National Press Club. ("Let me talk . . . about what this program is not. It is not a drift-net over Dearborn or Lackawanna or Fremont grabbing conversations. . . . This is not about intercepting conversations between people in the United States."
Hayden pays attention to words. Wyden should, too. This is clear when examining his third "credibility" charge. Wyden recalled Hayden's testimony on the NSA Trailblazer program at a prior confirmation hearing. Hayden said NSA was "overachieving" on that program, Wyden claimed, even though the current Newsweek calls the program a failure.
More misleading? Hardly. In his 2005 testimony, Hayden discussed Trailblazer's conceptual, practical and financial problems. He said "overachieve," but he clearly meant NSA was trying to do too much. ("The other thing I'd add that we learned, Senator, is that we don't profit by trying to do moon shots, by trying to take the great leap forward, that we can do a lot better with incremental improvement. . . ." ) Wyden yanked "overachieve" to make it appear Hayden was praising a subpar program. Here's Webster's second definition of the word: "to drive oneself obsessively in trying to reach unreasonable goals."
By this definition Wyden was overachieving in trying to attack Hayden's credibility. The upshot: His drive-by character assassination was more worthy of a CIA operative than a Senate Intelligence Committee member assessing a potential CIA director in time of war.
(Editor's Note: The Senate on Friday confirmed Gen. Michael Hayden as the new head of the CIA. The vote was 78-to-15. Hayden succeeds former Congressman Porter Goss, whose last day was Friday.)
David Reinhard
