President Bush's CIA nominee, Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, listens to a question during his Senate confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington Thursday, May 18, 2006. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)Well, I can tell you that Hayden will be confirmed by a rubber-stamping Senate, along the usual party-line vote. Reading this Yahoo News story, shows that the Bush administration is using the same political strategy of having the nominee answer the question by not answering the question. It is even giving me a headache:
WASHINGTON - CIA nominee Gen. Michael Hayden insisted on Thursday that the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program was legal and that it was designed to ensnare terrorists--not spy on ordinary people.
"Clearly the privacy of American citizens is a concern constantly," the four-star Air Force general told the Senate Intelligence Committee at his confirmation hearing. "We always balance privacy and security."
This is just the start of the spinning, but it is the same type of spin from this Bush White House for the past five months. But it gets better. Because now Hayden is introducing a new term in this warrantless spying program--probable cause! This is fun:
Hayden said he decided to go ahead with the then-covert surveillance program, which has been confirmed by Bush, believing it to be legal and necessary.
"When I had to make this personal decision in October 2001 ... the math was pretty straightforward. I could not not do this," Hayden said.
He said the surveillance program used a "probable cause" standard that made it unlikely that information about average Americans would be scrutinized.
The domestic spying program used a "probable cause" standard that made it unlikely that information about average Americans would be scrutinized? I looked up the definition of probable cause in Wikipedia:
In United States criminal law, probable cause refers to the standard by which a police officer may make an arrest, conduct a personal or property search or obtain a warrant. It is also used to refer to the standard to which a grand jury believes that a crime has been committed. This term comes from the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution:
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. -- 4th Amendment
So in order to search a person's property, papers, effects, law enforcement officials must obtain a warrant based on some type of evidence that a crime has been committed. They need to have something to give to a judge for a warrant, rather than just have a suspicion of a crime committed. However, I think the Bush administration is using an even looser definition of probable cause here. In the same Wikipedia article, I found this:
The most widely held common definition would be "a reasonable belief that a crime has been committed" and that the person is linked to the crime with the same degree of certainty. An alternative definition has been proposed, "reason to believe that an injury had criminal cause", which is claimed to be more protective of individual rights as was intended by the authors of the Bill of Rights. See the critique below.
In the context of warrants, the Oxford Companion to American Law defines probable cause as "information sufficient to warrant a prudent person's belief that the wanted individual had committed a crime (for an arrest warrant) or that evidence of a crime or contraband would be found in a search (for a search warrant)." "Probable cause" is a stronger standard of evidence than a reasonable suspicion, but weaker than what is required to secure a criminal conviction. Even hearsay can supply probable cause if it is from a reliable source or is supported by other evidence.
In other words, the Bush administration is basing their warrantless domestic spying programs on their own definition of "probable cause," by saying it is a reasonable belief that a crime has been committed, and that a person is linked to a crime. Therefore, that person can be spied upon using these NSA spying programs, without asking a judge for a search warrant. Finally, the Bush administration is claiming that the details of the NSA spying program are classified, so that the extent of the program is not revealed to the American public. We don't know how far this program goes, or how many people have been spied upon by this program, or even if this program is used for other results than fighting terrorism. Continuing with the Yahoo story:
But he [Hayden] declined to openly discuss reports that the NSA was engaged in even broader surveillance, including a story in USA Today that the NSA has been secretly collecting phone-call records of tens of millions of U.S. citizens.
Under questioning from Democratic Sen. Carl Levin (news, bio, voting record) of Michigan, Hayden said he would only talk about the part of the program the president had confirmed.
"Is that the whole program?" asked Levin.
"I'm not at liberty to talk about that in open session," Hayden said. A closed-door session was planned for later in the day.
There is so many more end-run arounds in this first day of confirmation hearings, that you might as well watch it, sitting on your old "Sit-And-Spin" toy. Consider how Hayden responded to the inquiry that another military man would be heading up another spy agency, thus bringing together all of the nation's spy agencies under the Pentagon:
Some critics have suggested that Hayden, 61, who remains an active general, is too closely aligned with the Pentagon to objectively run the civilian CIA.
Asked whether he is considering retiring from the military to take the CIA post, Hayden, dressed in his Air Force uniform bearing a host of medals, told the panel: "The fact that I have to decide what tie to put on in the morning doesn't change who I am."
Or how about U.S. intelligence in Iran:
Asked about U.S. intelligence on Iran, Hayden said, "Iran is a difficult problem."
Or how about the perennial favorite--Iraqi WMDs:
He [Hayden] suggested U.S. intelligence-gathering on Iran's weapons program was more complex and detailed than that done on Iraq.
Hayden said questions raised included, "How are decisions made in that country? Who are making those decisions? What are their real objectives?
Hayden acknowledged a series of intelligence failures in the run-up to the U.S. decision to invade Iraq and promised to take steps to guard against a repeat of such errors.
"We just took too much for granted. We didn't challenge our basic assumptions," he told the Senate Intelligence Committee at his confirmation hearing.
Look at that sidestep! Intelligence gathering for Iranian WMDs are more complex than Iraqi WMDs, with Hayden answering senator's questions with his own questions, while promising the sun, moon, and sky, in future intelligence-gathering missions. Yes, we've made some mistakes, but we've corrected them. How? By raising new questions on how intelligence decisions are made.
And now I can't leave this posting without including this one final little Hayden remark:
Hayden declined to answer a string of questions by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (news, bio, voting record), D-Calif., saying he would answer them later in a closed-door session.
They included whether he believed that "waterboarding," in which prisoners are strapped to a plank and dunked in water until nearly drowning, was an acceptable form of interrogation. He also declined to say publicly how long he believed the United States could hold terror suspects without a trial.
"He didn't answer any of them," Feinstein said into an open mike as the hearing recessed for lunch.
So now Hayden's a surfer dude! RIGHT ON!
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