Gen. Hayden’s Glass House

Exclusive: Official Washington’s national security/mainstream media incest was on scandalous display when ex-NSA chief Michael Hayden posed as a CNN analyst to denounce Edward Snowden for exposing surveillance excesses that Hayden had a hand in creating, writes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

By Ray McGovern

Former National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden should not throw any more stones, lest his own glass house be shattered. His barrage Friday against truth-teller Edward Snowden and London Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald invited a return rain of boulders for Hayden committing the same violations of constitutional protections that he is now excusing.

Writing as “CNN Terrorism Analyst,” Hayden read from the unctuous script previously used by “Meet the Press” host David Gregory on June 23 when he questioned Greenwald’s status as a journalist. Hayden claimed Greenwald deserves “the Justice Department’s characterization of a co-conspirator.”

Retired Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA and the NSA.

But the principal target of Hayden’s ire was Snowden. After lumping him together with despicable characters like CIA’s Aldrich Ames, Robert Hanssen of the FBI, and others who spied for the U.S.S.R. and then disparaging “leakers” like Bradley Manning Hayden wrote, “Snowden is in a class by himself.”

But it is Michael Hayden who is in a class by himself. He was the first NSA director to betray the country’s trust by ordering wholesale violation of what was once the First Commandment at NSA: “Thou Shalt Not Eavesdrop on Americans Without a Court Warrant.” Not to mention playing fast and loose with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 and the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.

While Hayden has implicitly offered a second-grader kind of excuse, that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney “made me do it,” that does not let Hayden off the hook.

I have found it helpful lately to read the one-sentence Fourth Amendment during TV and radio interviews in order to provide necessary context and a backdrop against which viewers/listeners can gauge how the recent revelations about NSA operations comport, or do not, with the strictures in the amendment. Thankfully, the language is pretty straightforward and specific:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Peer Review

Former NSA directors are not normally given to criticizing the performance of their successors. We know, however, about the passionate disapproval with which two of Hayden’s predecessors reacted to the revelations in the Dec. 16, 2005 New York Times article, “Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts,” by journalists James Risen and Eric Lichtblau.

Risen had ferreted out explosive information on eavesdropping (and other highly questionable operations) several months before the 2004 presidential election, disclosures that would have given American voters some important information regarding whether Bush deserved reelection or not.

But the Times, in its wisdom, acquiesced to the Bush administration’s demands that the story be spiked not because the article was inaccurate, but precisely because it was so accurate, and embarrassing. The White House gave the Times the familiar warning that disclosure would “damage national security.”

But as 2005 drew to an end, the newspaper could wait no longer, since Risen’s book, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, was already in galley and about to be published. The book contained, literally, chapter and verse on the illegal activity authorized by NSA Director Michael Hayden at the behest of Bush and Cheney. (And given the way court decisions are going these days, it is seeming more and more likely that James Risen is headed for jail if he insists on the First Amendment rights of a journalist and continues to refuse to divulge his sources.)

When the Times finally published the story in December 2005, the Bush administration scrambled to defend the warrantless eavesdropping, a demonstrably gross violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) expressly forbidding eavesdropping on Americans without a court warrant. The White House immediately asked Hayden, then Deputy Director of National Intelligence, to play point man with the media, helping hapless Attorney General Alberto Gonzales defend the indefensible.

Hayden’s perfidy was too much for Gen. Bill Odom, who had been NSA Director from 1985 to 1988. Odom was seething as he prepared to be interviewed on Jan. 4, 2006, by George Kenney, a former Foreign Service officer and now producer of “Electronic Politics.” Odom blurted out, “Hayden should have been court martialed.” And President Bush “should be impeached,” added the general with equal fury.

Odom ruled out discussing, during the interview itself, the warrantless eavesdropping revealed by the New York Times three weeks earlier. In a memorandum about the conversation, Kenney opined that Odom appeared so angry that he realized that if he started discussing the still-classified issue, he would not be able to control himself.

Why was Gen. Odom so angry? Because he, like all uniformed officers (as well as many civilian officials), took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; because he took that oath seriously; and because he had done his damndest to ensure that all NSA employees strictly observed the prohibition against eavesdropping on Americans without a warrant.

Also deeply disappointed was former NSA Director Admiral Bobby Ray Inman, who led NSA from 1977 to 1981 and actually played a key role in helping shape the FISA law of 1978. (Before he retired, Inman had achieved virtual sainthood in Official Washington as one of the country’s most respected intelligence managers, although he was known for looking the other way or as he put it, “pulling up his socks” when the powers-that-be were spinning the facts or exceeding their legal powers.)

Hayden’s Record

From the Bush/Cheney White House perspective, Hayden had performed quite well working with the supine mainstream media to defend the Bush/Cheney illegal eavesdropping programs. For services performed, Hayden was nominated on May 8, 2006, reportedly at Cheney’s urging, to replace CIA Director Porter Goss, who had retired abruptly on May 5 after just seven controversial months as director.

So the nomination of Hayden to lead the CIA was very much on the minds of Inman, Risen and others who gathered for a public discussion at the New York Public Library that same afternoon, May 8, 2006. Participants were brought up short when Inman took strong issue with Hayden’s flouting of FISA:

“There clearly was a line in the FISA statutes which says you couldn’t do this,” said Inman, who went on to call specific attention to an “extra sentence put in the bill that said, ‘You can’t do anything that is not authorized by this bill.’”

Inman spoke proudly of the earlier ethos at NSA, where “it was deeply ingrained that you operate within the law and you get the law changed if you need to.” Risen quipped about how easy it would have been to amend the FISA statute after the 9/11 attacks when the American people were demanding revenge: “In October 2001, you could have set up guillotines on the public streets of America.”

Attorney General Gonzales, however, knew that there were still institutional obstacles to the NSA figuratively decapitating the Fourth Amendment. At a press conference on Dec. 19, 2005, three days after the Risen/Lichtblau disclosures in the New York Times, Gonzales was asked why the administration did not seek new legislation to enable it to conduct the eavesdropping program legally. He responded:

“We have had discussions with Congress in the past certain members of Congress as to whether or not FISA could be amended to allow us to adequately deal with this kind of threat, and we were advised that that would be difficult, if not impossible.”

This was not the only hint at the time that the surveillance program was so huge in scope and so intrusive that even a servile Congress, typically reluctant to turn down any project labeled “anti-terrorist,” would not have blessed it. Really, could even a doormat Congress be expected to approve “Collect Everything?”

Inman’s Short-Lived Criticism

By happenstance, I found myself with a front-row seat watching honor among thieves play out, i. e., how the Washington Establishment generals and admirals cover for one other. Inman’s remarks at the New York Public Library had been written up by Steve Clemons in his blog, The Washington Note.

Worse still for Hayden, Democracynow’s Amy Goodman showed video clips of Inman’s undisguised criticism of Gen. Hayden on the morning of May 17, less than a week before the Senate Intelligence Committee took up Hayden’s nomination to be CIA director.  Something needed to be done … and quickly.

Specifically, Inman needed to be called to atone for his unspeakable sin of candor the more so since he enjoyed quasi-sainthood on both sides of the aisle in Congress. So there I sat on May 17 in the anteroom of the CNN/New York studio of Lou Dobbs, who wanted to talk to me about my mini-debate two weeks earlier with then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Iraq.

Into the waiting room rushed a breathless Bobby Ray Inman. I am then told that he has just been given part of my time, since he needed to discuss the nomination of Michael Hayden to head the CIA. I had read Steve Clemons’s blog and was well aware of Inman’s remarks on May 8. As he rushed to don a borrowed tie, I had just enough time to give him an atta-boy for his honesty at the library and to express the hope he would stay on message with Lou Dobbs. Naive me!

Watching the monitor I saw Inman give his highest recommendation for Gen. Hayden as supremely qualified to head the CIA. That, I thought to myself, is how the system works. Hayden’s nomination sailed through the Senate Intelligence Committee on May 23 by a vote of 12 to 3 and the full Senate on May 26 by 78 to 15.

A whiff of conscience showed through during Hayden’s nomination hearing to become CIA Director, though, when he flubbed the answer to what was supposed to be a soft, fat pitch from Bush administration loyalist, Sen. Kit Bond, R-Missouri, then vice-chair of the Senate intelligence overlook committee:

“Did you believe that your primary responsibility as director of NSA was to execute a program that your NSA lawyers, the Justice Department lawyers, and White House officials all told you was legal, and that you were ordered to carry it out by the President of the United States?”

Instead of the simple “Yes” that had been scripted, Hayden paused and spoke rather poignantly, and revealingly: “I had to make this personal decision in early October 2001, and it was a personal decision … I could not not do this.”

Why should it have been such an enormous personal decision whether or not to obey a White House order? No one asked Hayden, but it requires no particular acuity to figure it out.

This is a military officer who, like the rest of us, swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; a military man well aware that one must not obey an unlawful order; and an NSA director totally familiar with the FISA restrictions. That, it seems clear, is why Hayden found it a difficult personal decision.

Knowing the Law

No American, save perhaps Admiral Inman and Gen. Odom, knew the FISA law better than Hayden. Nonetheless, in his testimony, Hayden conceded that he did not even require a written legal opinion from NSA lawyers as to whether the new, post-9/11 comprehensive surveillance program to be implemented without court warrants, without “probable cause,” and without adequate consultation in Congress could pass the smell test.

Hayden said he sought an oral opinion from then-NSA general counsel Robert L. Deitz, whom Hayden later brought over to CIA as a “trusted aide” to CIA Director Hayden! (In the fall of 2007, Hayden launched Deitz on an investigation of the CIA’s own statutory Inspector General who had made the mistake of being too diligent in investigating abuses like torture).

Interestingly, Hayden did not pass the smell test for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, who on May 25 took a principled stand against his nomination and voted against it the following day. In his brief but typically eloquent one-minute speech on the Senate floor, Sen. Obama was harshly critical of both Hayden and President George W. Bush. Obama insisted that “President Bush is not above the law; no president is above the law.” His words did not ring as hollow then as they do now in retrospect.

To his credit, I suppose, President-elect Obama did get rid of Hayden for cause, as I tried to explain in “What’s CIA Director Hayden Hidin’” on Jan. 15, 2009. I ended that article with the following word of “good riddance.” (It was hardly prophetic rather a very safe bet):

“The sooner Hayden is gone (likely to join the Fawning Corporate Media channels as an expert commentator, and to warm some seats on defense-industry corporate boards) the better. His credentials would appear good for that kind of work.”

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington.  During his 27 years as a CIA analyst, he worked very closely with conscientious colleagues at NSA who, if they came upon the name of an American in an intercepted message, would razor it out of the paper before releasing it, that being the ethos at NSA then.

10 comments for “Gen. Hayden’s Glass House

  1. Frances in California
    July 22, 2013 at 15:15

    Yes, bobzz, I, too, always pause to read F G Sanford. He/She seems a college professor or something . . . kind of my “School that I can still afford”.

  2. bobzz
    July 22, 2013 at 12:02

    and I always appreciate the comments of F. G. Sanford.

  3. Danny G
    July 22, 2013 at 09:06

    I was pleased to read of George Kenney’s role in this affair. Reminds me that “we are the many, they are the few”.
    Great piece, Ray McGovern.

  4. F. G. Sanford
    July 22, 2013 at 03:11

    As the American public wrangles with the truly pertinent social issues, isn’t it wonderful that these clandestine operators quietly go about sparing us the nuisance of distractions? We are free to dedicate all our collective energy to the really important stuff, while non-elected officials, political appointees and highly paid representatives of corporate lobbying firms assume the duties too tiresome and tedious for the rest of us. Unencumbered by the burdensome trivialities of public debate, Constitutional relevance and legislative formalities, these trusty servants have conscientiously and effectively begun to reshape policy and rewrite laws in our best interests.

    Let’s face it. Kourtney Kardashian displaying her “body confidence” in a low-cut swim suit, or the latest trends in tuxedoes for gay wedding ceremonies are too important to be left on the back burner. As long as those dedicated public servants are willing to manage the banking sector, dictate foreign policy, curb wasteful health care benefits, wipe out frivolous education assistance, steer crumbling cities into profitable receivership and eliminate environmental objections to massive corporate profits, why worry about the small stuff?

    Gun rights, abortions, gay marriage, intelligent design and “full disclosure” of UFO secrets are much bigger issues. Our scientific community, spearheaded by sensationalist visionaries like Michio Kaku, are reassuring us that, as we progress to a “Type 1 Society”, those who oppose globalization are the “real terrorists”. But, the protocols in place for managing the repercussions of “first contact” will keep the really shattering revelations secret to protect us from our own lack of ability to “handle the truth”. Everything, apparently, can be explained in terms of “Star Trek”.

    As off-shoring “free trade” continues to dismantle the taxable income base, the resultant misery caused by lack of jobs, the widening wealth gap and loss of revenue will lead to creative new measures to counter public discontent. The burgeoning private prison industry will help some. Thankfully, the democratic process will not be involved in these measures as it would be too inefficient. Talented political appointees will be nominated to insure that adequate measures are adopted. Thankfully, our elected officials are steadfastly dedicated to their primary mission: pacifying the Israel lobby.

    In order to insure that these public officials are unhindered by subversive elements, the intelligence community will face many challenges. Inevitably, some of their own techniques will reveal things they’d rather not know about each other, as well as the rest of us. Secrecy will breed contempt, and in the absence of oversight, reason on the one hand, and speculation on the other, will be employed to explain the otherwise unexplainable. Conspiracy “theories” may flourish. Imagination may run wild. Scandals will have to be suppressed. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire! After all, that orgy of homoerotic sadomasochism on display at Abu Ghraib had to be somebody’s idea. A few participants were clearly enjoying themselves. As that famous newspaper header admonishes, “Inquiring minds want to know!” Dangerous minds indeed!

    My guess is, the public will stick with the important stuff, like “The Royal Baby”. As soon as anything really ominous threatens to distract public attention from the pressing “democratic” issues, we’ll be treated to a rash of UFO sightings. And we’ll be happy to leave all that irrelevant policy stuff to the appointed officials. Exciting times are ahead, and you heard it here first!

    Thanks, Ray, may the force be with you!

    • gregorylkruse
      July 22, 2013 at 13:59

      Well said, Mr. Sanford. Even more disturbing that what is going on here, is that according to a piece in the Scientific American, exactly the same things are happening in an infinite number of “universes” 10×10 to the 28th power meters from here in all directions.

  5. Calm
    July 22, 2013 at 02:54

    I believe that this is the first song about Edward Snowden

    Every Call You Make
    http://www.everycallyoumake.com

    Calm

    • Cal
      July 22, 2013 at 08:28

      you seem like a scam artist to me..

      • Calm
        July 22, 2013 at 12:28

        @ Calm …. About being a scam artist:

        I invested about 25 hundred dollars to support Edward Snowden.

        How much have you done except blab a little?

        Is Glenn Greenwald a scam artist? Isn’t the Guardian selling their newspaper?

        You made an accusation without even knowing me or to have asked for a transparent financial accounting.

        Calm

        • Wherestheproof
          July 23, 2013 at 01:16

          Can you prove the investment? Or just babel (blab) the claim?

  6. DeWayne C. Davis
    July 21, 2013 at 23:22

    Thank you. Clarification of who, in our higher, more powerful positions of trust in/for our Nation can still read and understand the words and meanings so clearly expressed in Our original Constitution w/ Lawful amendments, is essential to true service at all levels, especially: National Security Intelligence.

    Semper Fi!

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