by John M. Curtis
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Copyright May 8, 2006
All Rights Reserved.

resting control of the Central Intelligence Agency, President George W. Bush announced his pick of 61-year-old former Air force Gen. Michael Hayden to replace Porter Goss as its new director. Goss resigned May 5 without much explanation, after a rocky 20-month stint, battling former U.N. ambassador and newly minted National Intelligence Agency Director John D. Negroponte for control of the CIA's role in domestic and foreign intelligence operations. With only a little more than a year on the job, Negroponte chafed with Goss, over the CIA's autonomy with the White House and military. After Sept. 11, intelligence failures were blamed on turf-wars and a lack of coordination among military intelligence, National Security Agency, the CIA and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. After resigning, Goss buttoned his lips, keeping the real story silent.

      Hayden's nomination raised healthy anxiety in some lawmakers, concerned that military control of CIA could compromise the agency's ability to provide dissenting views to Congress and future presidents. Much criticism has already been launched against the Pentagon for short-circuiting the CIA on the issue of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. Bush's infamous 2003 State of the Union speech claiming falsely Saddam's attempt to buy “yellocake” uranium from Niger is a prime example of how the Defense Intelligence Agency, and specifically the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, eclipsed the CIA from getting out the truth. Convincing proof based on “military intelligence”—not the CIA—was presented by former Secretary of State Colin A. Powell to the U.N. Security Council Feb 5, 2003, only six weeks before Cruise Missiles hit Baghdad March 20. claiming Saddam's arsenal of WMD.

      Handing the CIA over to a career military man with loyalty to the National Intelligence Agency and the White House raises red flags, given the way the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans supplied faulty intel to make the case for the Iraq War. While the OSP was disbanded June 2003, the clandestine intelligence unit was supported by Vice President Dick Cheney and founded by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Assistant Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, the current head of the World Bank. Under director Douglas Feith, the now defunct OSP supplied the White House exactly the intelligence needed to justify the Iraq War. Feith relied heavily on reports from Iraqi exile and head of the Iraqi National Congress Ahmed Chalabi, whose mentally ill brother-in-law codenamed “Curveball,” insisted Saddam possessed mobile germ laboratories.

      All of the concocted intelligence stemmed not from the CIA but from military intelligence, controlled by Vice President Dick Cheney's office. It's beyond ironic that Cheney's former Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby stands indicted by special prosecutor U.S. Atty. Patrick J. Fitzgerald for perjury and obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame affair. Plame's husband, former Iraqi ambassador Joseph C. Wilson III, first fingered the White House in the New York Times for manipulating intelligence July 6, 2003. Eight days later his wife was outed in retaliation by syndicated columnist Robert Novak for being an undercover CIA operative. Grand jury transcripts now reveal that Cheney authorized Libby to leak the information to the press. Cheney and Bush's chief strategist and former Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove remain under investigation by Fitzgerald's new grand jury.

      Compromising the intelligence gathering capabilities of the CIA concentrates too much power in the hands of the White House and Pentagon. In the months leading up to the Iraq war, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz routinely criticized the CIA's intelligence gathering capabilities. They trashed the CIA about intel on Saddam's WMD, the same way they discredited former Chief U.N. Weapons Inspector, Dr. Hans Blix, whose firsthand inspections of Saddam's WMD were 100% accurate, namely, that Saddam possessed no WMD. Allowing the White House, Pentagon and now Negroponte's National Intelligence Agency to control the CIA would be disastrous. “We should not have a military person leading a civilian agency at this time,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), opposing Bush's pick. Hayden, a former National Security Agency Director [1999-2005], was Negroponte's top deputy.

      Connecting the dots, allowing Hayden to direct the CIA would give the White House, Pentagon and National Intelligence Agency a virtual lock on intelligence gathering operations. To protect the integrity of U.S. intelligence, the CIA must remain independent from military and political influence. A brief look at how the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans subverted the CIA and led to gross manipulation of intelligence makes the best case for why Michael Hayden should not run the CIA. Until former CIA director Porter Goss, a former CIA operative and U.S. congressman, unbuttons his lips, it's too risky to put Negroponte's chief deputy in charge of the CIA. Calling the Office of Special Plans “dangerous for U.S. national security and a threat to world peace,” former CIA officer Larry Johnson made the strongest case for keeping the CIA truly independent.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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