Two Important Pieces on Bush, NSA, Wiretapping, and the CIA

First, this from the 5/9 LA Times:

But Hayden, who for six years was director of the National Security Agency, is also associated with almost every intelligence issue that has become a problem for the administration — including the failure to prevent the Sept. 11 attacks, misjudgments about weapons programs in Iraq, and eavesdropping on U.S. residents without court warrants.

Nonetheless, the White House apparently is willing to revive the eavesdropping debate to highlight national security issues, which have been a political plus for the administration.

Some lawmakers also have expressed concern about putting a military officer in charge of a civilian agency at a time when the Defense Department is seen as expanding its involvement in spying operations and increasingly encroaching on the CIA's turf, prompting fears that the agency will be "gobbled up" by the Pentagon.

Bush sought to brush back congressional critics, citing Hayden's extensive experience in a series of national security assignments, and declaring him "the right man to lead the CIA at this critical moment in our nation's history."

And this from the Boston Globe entitled "Bush's CIA Takeover", also from 5/9, which states:

Some have voiced concern about Hayden's military background. But this should be less of a hindrance than his cavalier disregard for the law. Other military officers have headed the CIA without compromising that civilian agency's independence from the Pentagon.

Hayden has demonstrated his own readiness to stand up to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in the most telling way. In 2004, when Congress was creating the Office of National Intelligence to oversee 16 intelligence agencies, Hayden testified that the branch of military intelligence he led, the NSA, should report to the new director of national intelligence rather than the Defense Department. In the give-no-quarter world of Washington power struggles, this amounted to a secessionist rebellion against the secretary of defense by the chief of an agency that commands a major share of the intelligence budget. And Rumsfeld made his displeasure known to Hayden.

Even if they are satisfied that Hayden will not make the CIA just one more branch of a Pentagon that controls 80 percent of the intelligence budget, senators do need to come down hard on his responsibility for wiretapping Americans without obtaining a warrant from a judge on the special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance court. Those judges hardly ever refuse to issue such a warrant, and if intelligence officials feel they must intercept a phone conversation or an e-mail immediately, under the law they may do so -- provided only that they obtain a warrant after 72 hours.

It is not enough for Hayden to say, as he has in the past, that the NSA's warrantless taps on Americans are not the result of indiscriminate data-mining but are strictly ''targeted and focused" on terrorist suspects. He must explain why the 72-hour grace period is not sufficient, why he thought the NSA could simply ignore the law, and why he did not ask Bush to ask Congress to change the law if it hindered efforts to prevent another Sept. 11.