On “Meet the Press” today, CIA Director General Michael V. Hayden offered blunt assessments on a wide range of major U.S. intelligence operations since Sept. 11, 2001, as well as the state of the highly secretive organization itself.
Among the most candid comments in his first Sunday morning interview since becoming director two years ago, Hayden said that Al Qaeda training operations on the Pakistan/Afghan border were a “clear and present danger to … the West in general and the U.S. in particular,” called Osama bin Laden “iconic…but not operationally involved” in Al Qaeda plans, and said that the Iraqi army’s recent operations in Basra “is a very decisive act on the part of Prime Minister [Nouri] al-Maliki to get personally involved in extending Iraqi government control over parts of Iraq that frankly have not been under much central government control for several years. It’s a very decisive moment, and success is not guaranteed.”
Appearing articulate and well-informed on the issues, Hayden proved to have a keen command of the complex legal shadows that have come to define the CIA’s role in the Bush administration’s “War on Terror.”
Seeking to cast the organization as a patriotic, law-abiding agency made up of ordinary but fiercely dedicated citizens, Hayden claimed that the public discourse “has become incredibly caustic” and the activities of the agency have been subject to “unfair criticisms.” Noting that 50 percent of the agency’s analysts have been added since 9/11, Hayden called the CIA “a good thing for the Republic,” as well as “a learning organization” that “got it wrong” as far as the intelligence assessments on Iraq’s nuclear weapons program.
Admitting that he himself had been duped by the false reports, and blaming “momentum” for the lack of follow-up analysis at the time, Hayden was repentant on the issue, saying the organization has “gone to school on this,” and has learned from its sizeable errors.
Underscoring Americans’ fears that more al-Qaida-planned attacks within U.S. boundaries lie ahead, host Tim Russert pressed Hayden on a Washington Post article published Thursday that stated that the American military “has escalated unilateral strikes against al-Qaida” in Pakistani tribal areas on the Pakistan/Afghanistan border because crucial U.S. ally Pakistani Prime Minister Pervez Musharraf’s control on the country was on the brink of default.
While not confirming or denying the military activities, Hayden said that in the past 18 months, Al Qaeda has established safe havens “they haven’t enjoyed before on the border,” and that operatives being currently being brought in for training were so Western-looking that “they would not attract your attention if you were going through the customs line at Dulles airport.”
Admitting Musharraf’s weakening hold on power in the region and calling his political decision to lay off tribal areas “absolutely disastrous,” Hayden still issued high praise for the beleaguered, unpopular leader, saying, “We have not had a better partner in the war on terror than the Pakistan government.”
In a week that has seen alarming military escalations among Shiite militias in and around Basra, Hayden called counter-operations conducted by the Iraq army against the militias a “decisive…crossover moment” for Prime Minister al-Maliki. As Iraq’s second largest city and an economic stronghold due to oil revenues, Basra is a key city whose control is essential to the credibility of the Iraqi government to its citizens.
Dismissing reports that the military operations were conducted without consultation with Americans, Hayden argued that “the real telling moment is the political decision to take action by al-Maliki … Here is an example of an Iraqi leader stepping up,” adding that establishing a perception of a “competent and even-handed” military is crucial to the stability of the country. Acknowledging the harsh realities ahead, Hayden conceded that “it’s a real stew down there,” and, searching for the right word to describe his appraisal of the current strife, admitted to an overall “sense of disappointment” over what is happening there now.
Russert also grilled Hayden on NSA wiretapping and the current congressional debate over the CIA’s role in torturing terrorism suspects.
“Do you believe waterboarding is torture?” Russert asked. “It’s not important what I believe,” Hayden said. “It’s more important what the Department of Justice believes.” Responding to Russert’s queries on recently revised Army manuals on torture, Hayden claimed that such comparisons “set up a false dichotomy” because the Army manuals created parameters for young, new, “minimally supervised” soldiers with limited training time, while CIA agents are highly trained professionals operating under legal guidelines defined by the Department of Justice.
You can’t take the guidelines “created for one population and purpose and drop it on another organization,” Hayden explained. “It defies logic…[and] undercuts our ability to defend the nation.”
Russert pushed further. “Do you believe that Department of Justice allows the CIA to engage in waterboarding?” “I have no idea,” Hayden replied, “because I haven’t asked,” explaining that the CIA hasn’t used the technique in five years. But if it were used as a technique, he added, it would have to be approved and signed off as “lawful, consistent with our constitution, and our international obligations.”
