Friday, May 19, 2006 Gen Hayden: BushCo Apologist/ Criminal Of course BushCo wants to squeak Hayden into the head CIA spot. He is one of the architects who killed the Clinton-era NSA program (called Thin Thread, and was far better at tracking terrorists) that allowed them to obtain phone info legally (via BaltimoreSun): "The NSA developed a pilot program in the late '90s that would have enabled it to gather and analyze massive amounts of communications data w/o running afoul of privacy laws. But after the 9/11 attacks, it shelved the project -- not b/c it failed to work -- but b/c of bureaucratic infighting and a sudden WH expansion of the agency's surveillance powers, according to several intelligence officials." Hey... speaking of 9/11, check out what Hayden said about BushCo trumped up pre-war intell (via Think Progress): "Hayden was asked at his nomination hearing about whether he was comfortable with the Bush admin’s pre-war attempts to link Saddam and al Qaeda. SEN LEVIN: Were you comfortable with Mr. Feith’s office approach to intelligence analysis? HAYDEN: No, sir, I wasn’t. I wasn’t aware of a lot of the activity going on, you know, when it was contemporaneous w/ running up to the war. No, sir, I wasn’t comfortable. Ooops. Guess Hayden makes clear that, despite Bush’s assertion that the pre-war intelligence process “broke down,” the false intelligence about Iraq’s connection to al Qaeda was intentionally fabricated by political leaders, not intelligence analysts." |