Senate committee endorses general as new CIA chief

WASHINGTON -- The Senate Intelligence Committee voted yesterday to approve General Michael V. Hayden as director of the CIA, endorsing a veteran intelligence officer who has pledged to push the troubled agency to take more risks and work more closely with other US spy services.

Hayden now faces a confirmation vote before the full Senate, perhaps as soon as this week. Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, the chairman of the intelligence committee, called Hayden ``a proven leader and an extremely qualified intelligence professional."

The committee also passed an intelligence spending bill that would require the Bush administration to report to Congress on the treatment of detainees at clandestine CIA prisons overseas. Republican opposition derailed similar proposals on the Senate floor last year.

The panel's 12-to-3 vote to confirm Hayden was lopsided, but the dissent reflected lingering concern over his role in a domestic wiretapping program that has been a source of controversy for the Bush administration.

Just last year, Hayden received a unanimous endorsement from the committee as well as the Senate to become the deputy director for national intelligence, number two to the nation's top spy official, John D. Negroponte.

But Hayden's standing among some lawmakers has eroded in recent months amid disclosures of domestic spy operations mounted by the National Security Agency, which Hayden led from 1999 to 2005.

During his confirmation hearing last week, Hayden acknowledged that he was a leading architect of a surveillance program launched shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in which the NSA intercepted international phone calls and e-mails of US residents without prior court approval.

Some lawmakers have called the program illegal and said that it was kept secret from all but a handful of members of Congress for four years before it was exposed in news reports last year.

More recently, Hayden has had to fend off questions about whether the NSA also assembled phone records on tens of millions of Americans in an effort to identify suspicious calling patterns.

The three votes against Hayden were cast by Democratic senators Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Evan Bayh of Indiana, and Ron Wyden of Oregon. All three had expressed concerns about Hayden's role in the NSA domestic surveillance operations during the panel's confirmation hearing last week.

Even some of those who voted for Hayden expressed misgivings. ``My confidence in General Hayden should not be interpreted as confidence in this administration," said Senator Barbara Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, who cited concern ``that this administration sometimes pays lip service to the law of the land, as we have seen with recent revelations about the warrantless surveillance program."

Hayden, 61, is expected to be confirmed by the Senate. Roberts said he planned to push to have the vote before lawmakers depart for a week-long Memorial Day recess.

Hayden would replace CIA director Porter J. Goss, who resigned under pressure this month amid criticism of his leadership style and after clashes with Negroponte over the CIA's diminished role in the US intelligence community. Goss's last day at the agency is Friday.

Hayden stands to inherit an agency that has seen a surge in funding and hiring in the nearly five years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. But at the same time, the agency has lost significant clout due to sweeping intelligence reforms enacted last year.

The CIA director was stripped of authority over other intelligence agencies and is no longer in charge of delivering the president's daily intelligence briefing each morning.

But Hayden has agreed to take the job with an eye toward reinvigorating the CIA's spying directorate.