New tack on Hayden confirmation
Bid to cut nominee from spy furor seen
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration moved yesterday to separate General Michael Hayden's nomination to be the next CIA director from discussion of the secret domestic spying programs that he designed as head of the National Security Agency, in a seeming reversal of the White House's political strategy for today's confirmation hearing.
In a prepared statement submitted yesterday to the Senate intelligence committee for release today, Hayden makes no mention of the NSA's domestic surveillance programs, according to a former official who has seen the five-page unclassified document. Instead, Hayden focuses only on rebuilding the embattled Central Intelligence Agency.
And for the first time yesterday, the administration briefed every Senate and House intelligence committee member about the NSA's warrantless wiretapping efforts. The White House previously insisted that the program was too sensitive to disclose its details to the full committees, leading several senators to vow that they would use Hayden's confirmation hearing to press for more information.
Together, the two events stood in contrast to the administration's prior expressions of eagerness to turn Hayden's confirmation hearing into a showdown with critics of the domestic surveillance programs Bush authorized following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Last weekend, for example, Bush devoted his weekly radio address to Hayden's nomination, touting the spying program as one of Hayden's prime credentials to be CIA director.
''During General Hayden's tenure at the NSA, he helped establish and run one of our most vital intelligence efforts in the war on terror -- the terrorist surveillance program," Bush said. ''. . . Americans expect their government to do everything in its power under our laws and Constitution to protect them and their civil liberties. That is exactly what we are doing. And so far, we have been successful in preventing another attack on our soil."
Bush has conceded that the program, under which the NSA has been eavesdropping on Americans' international calls and e-mails, violates a 1978 law requiring the government to obtain warrants for such wiretaps. But Bush has said that his wartime powers give him the authority to override such laws.
The domestic spying program, whose existence was disclosed by the New York Times in December, has been a politically popular issue for Bush amid otherwise dismal public-approval polls. The administration and it supporters have framed the debate as a question of whether monitoring suspected Al Qaeda calls is a good idea, painting critics as soft on terrorism.
Last week, for example, Senator Trent Lott, a Mississippi Republican who sits on the intelligence committee, said Hayden's connection to the NSA surveillance program would help the GOP in the confirmation hearing. ''We've managed to turn the debate to our advantage," Lott told the Associated Press.
But in his prepared statement, according to the former official, Hayden will shy away from defending the program, making just one comment that could be read as an oblique reference to it: ''I vow that, if confirmed, we will dedicate ourselves to strengthening the American public's confidence and trust in the CIA and in reestablishing the agency's 'social contract' with the American people to whom we are ultimately accountable. The best way to strengthen the trust of the American people is to earn it by obeying the law."
Intelligence committee members were quiet yesterday after receiving the classified briefing on the warrantless wiretapping program. But the American Civil Liberties Union urged Congress not to be appeased by the White House's capitulation on briefing the full oversight committee on the eve of Hayden's hearing.
''Closed-door briefings should not be used to thwart the members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence from asking tough public questions of General Hayden, and he should provide the American public with answers," said Caroline Fredrickson, the ACLU's Washington director.
Meanwhile yesterday, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonpartisan think tank devoted to protecting the privacy of phone calls and e-mails, filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission asking for an investigation into a report that the NSA has compiled a massive database about purely domestic calls within the United States.
USA Today reported last week that the NSA had secretly asked domestic telecommunications companies to turn over information about calls, including date, time, and both numbers involved. The paper said the NSA was using the information for ''data mining," using computers to search for suspicious calling patterns.
In its complaint, the privacy think tank said that if American telephone companies acted without a subpoena or a court order, they may have violated a provision of the Communications Act. The law requires the companies to keep their customers' phone records confidential.
Since the USA Today story was published, however, two companies named in the report,
Marc Rotenberg, the executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said it is not clear whether the denials mean the companies had no dealings with the NSA. Verizon, for example, has declined to say whether MCI, which Verizon acquired in January, turned any information over to the NSA.
''With more questions being raised each day about the scope of participation by the telephone companies in the NSA's domestic surveillance program, the need for the FCC to undertake a comprehensive investigation has become clear," Rotenberg wrote in the complaint to the commission's chairman, Kevin Martin.
Representative Edward Markey, Democrat of Malden, had called for a similar investigation earlier this week. FCC spokesman David Fiske has said of Markey's letter, ''We are reviewing it carefully and will respond accordingly."
