"Dedicated to exposing the lies and impeachable offenses of George W. Bush"



Index
Gen Michael Hayden attacks Rumsfeld
Telegraph (UK)
By Alec Russell
May 19, 2006

President George W Bush's nominee as the new Central Intelligence Agency chief launched a thinly veiled attack on Donald Rumsfeld and his Pentagon aides yesterday, accusing them of cherry-picking the intelligence on Iraq to make the case for war.

Gen Michael Hayden, the former head of the National Security Agency, the CIA's sister agency, said pointedly that in his old role he was "uncomfortable" with the handling of pre-war intelligence on Iraq by the administration's hawks.

Insisting that if confirmed as CIA director he would "speak truth to power" he said officials had to be more accepting of ambiguities in intelligence and avoid trying to use intelligence to make a particular case.

Gen Hayden's remarks in the Senate were a stark insight into how the defence secretary, Mr Rumsfeld, and the hawks have fallen from grace.

Gen Hayden also faced a grilling by Democrats over the domestic wire-tapping programme which he put in place in his capacity as head of the NSA.

Despite the administration's failure to obtain the standard authorisation from a secret court, the programme was legal when it was launched after the September 11 attacks, he said.

Original Text

Commentary: