[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 56 (Wednesday, May 10, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4244-S4246]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     APPOINTMENT OF MICHAEL HAYDEN

  Mr. WARNER. I have known this fine officer for some time. I worked 
with him, and I'm very pleased that the President of the United States 
has asked the Senate for its advice and consent on this important 
nomination.
  Mr. President, our Nation is at war on two main battlefields--Iraq 
and Afghanistan. The national security apparatus of our country centers 
around the White House, the National, Security Council there, the 
Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of Homeland 
Security and, most importantly, the new organization headed by John 
Negroponte, our national intelligence community.
  It is imperative that this Nation receive as early as possible the 
replacement for Porter Goss to take over his position with the Central 
Intelligence Agency, and I hope that the hearings, which I believe will 
be scheduled, subject to Chairman Robert's views, early next week. 
Early next week there will be a very thorough investigation of this 
officer, and we, the Senate as a body, can conform General Hayden and 
move forward. This Senator, the Senator from Virginia, will give him 
the strongest support and as an ex officio member of the Intelligence 
Committee, I will participate in those hearings.
  Before turning to General Hayden, though, I would like to say a few 
words about Porter Goss. Mr. President, I am privileged to know this 
fine public servant who, presumably, is going to step down here shortly 
and conclude, perhaps, maybe not, maybe another assignment some day, 
but he certainly has had a distinguished public record of service. He 
was at the CIA himself, and served thereafter in the Congress. That is 
when I first came to know him.
  The Presiding Officer may recall that there was a time here, a dozen 
or so years ago, when, I remember, our good friend, Senator Moynihan 
from New York, said, it is time to re-examine the CIA, and possibly 
abolish it. Well, I and others came to the forefront and did what we 
could to begin to put that debate into balance. And we successfully put 
in a bill, and Porter Goss in the other body put in a similar bill, to 
establish a commission to review the origins of the CIA, and see how it 
was an integral part of our intelligence system.
  The late Les Aspen, the former Secretary of Defense, was the first 
chairman of that commission. He had an untimely death, and was succeed 
in that position by former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, at that 
time also having finished his work in the Department of Defense. The 
Commission did an excellent job. I just point that out as a reference 
in history of how hard Porter Goss has fought throughout his career to 
preserve the integrity and the viability of the Central Intelligence 
Agency.
  Now, we do not know, many of us, all the facts regarding this 
transition of positions. I personally hope to visit with Mr. Goss, and 
will do so prior to the hearings, so that I can understand his 
perspective more fully. But he did a lot of valuable work at that 
agency, notably he began to restore the focus of the agency to its 
principle function as it was established some 50 years ago, and that is 
the collection of human intelligence. So I say to Porter Goss, well 
done. And I say to General Hayden, you fill the shoes of a very able 
man, but you have a challenge of your own.
  Now, there are several issues that have been brought up by the 
general's nomination, and I would like to address those issues. First, 
there is a question of surveillance. As the head of the NSA, the 
National Security Agency, General Hayden was in the business of 
collecting electronic signals from around the world, from emissions 
abroad. We will go into that very thoroughly during the course of the 
hearings. I think that debate I appropriate. But I wish to point out 
that a very important debate has proceeded on that

[[Page S4245]]

issue on the Senate floor. It will continue for some time. And that is 
a debate over the legal ramifications, in other words, what are the 
origins of the power of the President to have directed this type of 
collection?
  I do believe that you can separate the collection, really, into two 
parts. One, the value of the collected intelligence from abroad as a 
contribution to our overall security. We have established now, here in 
the Senate, a larger committee that is looking into that, and I am 
confident that there will be a unanimous view that the collection of 
this intelligence, thus far, has been an important contribution to this 
Nation's effort in the war on terrorism.
  The other question, equally important, is the question of legality. 
Now, let me make it clear. In my visit with General Hayden yesterday, I 
said to him, ``You're not a lawyer.'' He said, ``No, I'm not a lawyer . 
. . I, General Hayden, when instructed to initiate this program, 
carefully assessed all variety of legal opinions, and it was clear by 
those contributing the legal opinions, the Attorney General, the White 
House Counsel, and others, that I had the authority to do so. As a non-
lawyer, I accepted their opinions, like all of us do every day in life, 
I accepted the opinions of our counsel, whether it be in private or 
public life.''
  So I believe that the Intelligence committee, as it sorts that out, 
will eventually find that, while we may not resolve--and I doubt in the 
context of this nomination we will in fact resolve--the very important 
questions of the legalities of this program, we will decide that 
General Hayden acted in accordance with prudence, and was guided by 
appropriate counsel. So I believe that that issue will not be an 
impediment to his nomination.
  Next is a question of the fact that this distinguished officer has 
risen through the ranks to become a four-star general. I have been 
privileged, I say with a sense of humility, to work with the uniformed 
people of this country for close to a half a century, in one way or 
another. I had a very modest military career of my own, but 
particularly when I was Secretary of the Navy, I had the opportunity 
work with and assess the biographies and the careers of many officers 
with worked their way from the lowest ranks up to four-star ranked 
general and flag rank in the Navy and Marine Corps.
  Now, I certainly say to the people of this country, that an 
individual who can withstand all of the rigor, all of the competition, 
to come from the very bottom to the very top is one who has been 
screened and thoroughly reviewed by many peer groups. And how proud 
this officer is to have succeeded to have gained four-star rank. I do 
not personally have any trouble with his retaining that rank in this 
capacity, if confirmed by the Senate to lead the CIA. The question is 
raised, though, legitimately. It should be a civilian running our 
intelligence. But my distinguished colleagues, I say to you, it is a 
civilian that runs the intelligence community: John Negroponte. He is 
now the top individual in charge of this magnificent intelligence 
system that this country has.

  Yesterday, I visited with Secretary Rumsfeld on this issue on several 
occasions by phone, and he spoke publicly to the issue, as well. He 
endorses General Hayden. He said, General Hayden will report directly 
to John Negroponte, the head of the overall intelligence community. And 
in no way does Secretary Rumsfeld feel that the fact that General 
Hayden continues to wear this uniform should there be any impediment in 
the chain of command, or in the responsibilities or the direction that 
this officer will give to his responsibilities. So, again, I believe 
that issue will be resolved in the committee hearings.
  In the work of the Intelligence Committee to review the credentials, 
the integrity, the character of this individual, I am confident that he 
will meet the highest standards of the office which he aspires to take 
over at the direction of the President. So that will be behind us.
  Finally, I would like to say a little bit about the Central 
Intelligence Agency itself. It is in Virginia, and I am privileged, as 
a current Virginia Senator, as have my predecessors, to give a little 
special attention, to that Agency. When the new structure of the 
intelligence community was devised here on the floor, I was active in 
the debate, and I think, if I can say with some modesty, helped to 
preserve more and more of the functions of that agency which I felt 
should remain in that agency, and the CIA has survived that 
legislation, I believe, quite well.
  There is still more to be done in finally convincing various persons, 
distinguished individuals in that Agency, that this is the way it is 
under the law, and this is the way we have got to conduct our business 
in the future. General Hayden can do that. He did it at NSA. He made a 
transformation of the thought process over there, and likewise he can 
do it here.
  But it is interesting: who would be his deputy? Well, we don't know 
entirely for sure, but I would like to read part of a column in today's 
Washington Post by David Ignatius. I happen to know him. His father, 
coincidentally, was Secretary of the Navy just before the late Senator 
Chafee and joined that Secretariat. And he is an author of some 
distinction.
  He points out that the current thinking, and I believe it to be 
correct, is that the transition in the CIA would be painful for General 
Hayden, I read from his article, but he's got a good choice for the 
second person in Mr. Stephen Kappes. And it is interesting about Mr. 
Kappes' career. I would like to read just a part of the column.
  At the core of the intelligence puzzle is the CIA, whose very name is 
outdated. It is no longer the Central Intelligence Agency, coordinating 
the work of the community. That's the DNI's job now. In a sensible 
reorganization, the CIA should refocus on the specific mission for 
which it was created more than 50 years ago--gathering HUMINT, which is 
intelligence jargon for the secrets between someone's ears. The days 
when the CIA could be all things to all intelligence consumers are 
over. Today's CIA should be a truly secret intelligence service in 
which the job of analysts is to target operations. The all-source 
analysis that creates finished intelligence should be managed by the 
DNI.
  Making this transition at the CIA will be painful, and Hayden is a 
good choice for the necessary surgery. As a feisty military officer, 
he's paradoxically the right person to fend off poaching by the 
Pentagon. By his own admission, Hayden doesn't know much about the 
CIA's operational work, but he does know how to modernize a big, 
hidebound bureaucracy. He did that at the National Security Agency--
helping the wiretappers adapt to a new world of e-mail, fiber-optic 
cables and wireless phones. He made enemies at the NSA, but he was a 
successful change agent.
  Hayden will have the ideal partner in Stephen Kappes, who is slated 
to be deputy director. Kappes is something of a legend at the agency: a 
charismatic ex-Marine who knows how to lead from the front. He punched 
all the tickets--fixing a broken Iranian operations group that had lost 
a string of agents, serving as chief of station in Moscow and as head 
of counterintelligence, and visiting Moammar Gaddafi and persuading him 
to give up his nuclear weapons program. Kappes' pitch to the Libyan 
leader is said to have been blunt, and irresistible: ``You are the 
drowning man and I am the lifeguard.''
  And on it goes. It points out very carefully that in the eyes of the 
professionals at the Agency, this gentleman, Mr. Kappes, is a man of 
impeccable credential, one who resigned from the Agency rather than 
fire his deputy, and that is to his everlasting credit.
  So I believe the morale at the Agency will be raised, Mr. President. 
It is a magnificent group of professionals. Our Nation should take 
pride in the quality of persons who fortunately are selected to serve 
in the CIA for generations. And I am proud and humbled to have a voice 
in representing so many of the officers at the CIA, who are my 
constituents. But I do so in knowing that this Agency is essential to 
our intelligence operations. This new leadership team of General Hayden 
and Mr. Kappes will take over and provide the strong direction that is 
needed to even strengthen the Agency, and to the extent that there has 
been any diminution in morale, I am confident this team will raise in a 
very short period of time.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record 
the full column from David Ignatius, and an excerpt from the official 
biography of General Hayden.

[[Page S4246]]

  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                [From the Washington Post, May 10, 2006]

                       The CIA's Mission Possible

                          (By David Ignatius)

       Firing Porter Goss was the easy part. The challenge now is 
     to complete the reorganization of U.S. intelligence so that 
     the 16 spy agencies under Director of National Intelligence 
     John Negroponte are fighting America's enemies rather than 
     battling each other in bureaucratic turf wars.
       But how to fit the pieces together? That's the quandary for 
     Negroponte and Gen. Michael Hayden, the administration's 
     nominee to succeed the miscast Goss. I suggest they take a 
     careful look at the British model. The Brits have a basic 
     division of labor: a small, elite Secret Intelligence Service 
     (known as MI6) collects human intelligence; an interagency 
     group known as the Joint Intelligence Committee analyzes that 
     information for policymakers and tells the spies what to 
     collect. When I look at Negroponte's organization chart, 
     that's the model that I hope is emerging. If so, he's moving 
     in the right direction.
       At the core of the intelligence puzzle is the CIA, whose 
     very name is outdated. It is no longer the Central 
     Intelligence Agency, coordinating the work of the community. 
     That's the DNI's job now. In a sensible reorganization, the 
     CIA should refocus on the specific mission for which it was 
     created more than 50 years ago--gathering HUMINT, which is 
     intelligence jargon for the secrets between someone's ears. 
     The days when the CIA could be all things to all intelligence 
     consumers are over. Today's CIA should be a truly secret 
     intelligence service in which the job of analysts is to 
     target operations. The all-source analysis that creates 
     finished intelligence should be managed by the DNI.
       Making this transition at the CIA will be painful, and 
     Hayden is a good choice for the necessary surgery. As a 
     feisty military officer, he's paradoxically the right person 
     to fend off poaching by the Pentagon. By his own admission, 
     Hayden doesn't know much about the CIA's operational work, 
     but he does know how to modernize a big, hidebound 
     bureaucracy. He did that at the National Security Agency--
     helping the wiretappers adapt to a new world of e-mail, 
     fiber-optic cables and wireless phones. He made enemies at 
     the NSA, but he was a successful change agent.
       Hayden will have the ideal partner in Stephen Kappes, who 
     is slated to be deputy director. Kappes is something of a 
     legend at the agency: a charismatic ex-Marine who knows how 
     to lead from the front. He punched all the tickets--fixing a 
     broken Iranian operations group that had lost a string of 
     agents, serving as chief of station in Moscow and as head 
     of counterintelligence, and visiting Moammar Gaddafi and 
     persuading him to give up his nuclear weapons program. 
     Kappes's pitch to the Libyan leader is said to have been 
     blunt, and irresistible: You are the drowning man and I am 
     the lifeguard.
       Kappes is the CIA version of the ultimate stand-up guy. 
     After achieving his dream of heading the Directorate of 
     Operations, Kappes walked away from the job in late 2004 
     rather than fire his deputy, Mike Sulick, as demanded by one 
     of the conservative hatchet men Goss had brought with him 
     from Capitol Hill. A former agency officer remembers the 
     reaction to Kappes's departure: ``It was a devastating body 
     blow, like someone has punched you in the solar plexus. The 
     wind came out of the sails that day and it has never come 
     back.''
       Kappes had a plan for reorganizing the Directorate of 
     Operations when he left, and he's in a position to implement 
     it now. It's said that he wants to create a far more nimble 
     spy service--one that can attack terrorist groups and other 
     targets around the world more aggressively. Today the CIA is 
     still locked in a Cold War structure, with the same fixed 
     array of directorates and geographical divisions. The agency 
     is frantically hiring new case officers, but under the old 
     structure there aren't ``OCPs'' (or overseas covered 
     positions) ready for them, so many of the young recruits 
     languish, ``stacked up at headquarters like cordwood'' in the 
     phrase of one CIA insider.
       CIA veterans say Kappes hopes to create an operations 
     capability that's more like a flying squad--detached from 
     headquarters and its layers of bureaucracy. If an al-Qaeda 
     call surfaces on a remote island in the Philippines where the 
     United States doesn't have an embassy or consulate, officers 
     from Kappes's revamped spy service could grab a laptop and be 
     on their way in hours.
       Maybe it's time to say goodbye to those three spooky 
     initials ``CIA'' and the bloated, barnacle-encrusted agency 
     they represent. Let Negroponte move his shop to Langley and 
     create a new elite analytical service there. Meanwhile, let 
     the covert operatives slip away in the night to destinations 
     unknown, where they can get to work stealing the secrets that 
     will keep America safe.
                                  ____


                              Biography of

                U.S. Air Force General Michael V. Hayden

       Gen. Michael V. Hayden is Principal Deputy Director of 
     National Intelligence, Washington, D.C. Appointed by 
     President George W. Bush, he is the first person to serve in 
     this position. General Hayden is responsible for overseeing 
     the day-to-day activities of the national intelligence 
     program. He is the highest-ranking military intelligence 
     officer in the armed forces.
       General Hayden entered active duty in 1969 after earning a 
     bachelor's degree in history in 1967 and a master's degree in 
     modern American history in 1969, both from Duquesne 
     University. He is a distinguished graduate of the 
     university's ROTC program. General Hayden has served as 
     Commander of the Air Intelligence Agency and as Director of 
     the Joint Command and Control Warfare Center. He has been 
     assigned to senior staff positions at the Pentagon, 
     Headquarters U.S. European Command, National Security Council 
     and the U.S. Embassy in the People's Republic of Bulgaria. 
     The general has also served as Deputy Chief of Staff, United 
     Nations Command and U.S. Forces Korea, Yongsan Army Garrison, 
     South Korea. Prior to his current assignment, General Hayden 
     was Director, National Security Agency, and Chief, Central 
     Security Service, Fort George G. Meade, Md.


                               education

       1967 Bachelor of Arts degree in history, Duquesne 
     University, Pittsburgh, Pa., 1969 Master's degree in modern 
     American history, Duquesne University, 1975 Academic 
     Instructor School, Maxwell Air Force Base, Ala., 1976 
     Squadron Officer School, Maxwell AFB, Ala., 1978 Air Command 
     and Staff College, Maxwell AFB, Ala., 1980 Defense 
     Intelligence School, Defense Intelligence Agency, Bolling 
     AFB, D.C,, 1983 Armed Forces Staff College, Norfolk, Va., 
     1983 Air War College, Maxwell AFB, Ala.

  Mr. WARNER. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. DeMINT). The Senator from Tennessee.
  Mr. ALEXANDER. How much time remains?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Five minutes.

                          ____________________