The United States Senate on Friday confirmed air force General Michael Hayden as the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency, which has been in turmoil over intelligence failures leading up to the September 11 attacks and the 2003 Iraq invasion.
Hayden (61) was approved to run the embattled CIA by a vote of 78 to 15, despite questions raised during Senate hearings over his oversight of the National Security Agency’s (NSA) controversial domestic wiretap programme.
He was nominated on May 8 by President George Bush to replace Porter Goss, who stepped down after a year and a half as the CIA director amid criticism that morale in the agency had deteriorated under his watch.
After rising up in the Pentagon intelligence bureaucracy starting from the Cold War, Hayden ran the electronic-spying-focused NSA from 1999 to 2005.
In Senate committee hearings, he promised to defend the key civilian spy agency, which has been battered by intense criticism and infighting since the September 11 2001 attacks and the US invasion of Iraq.
But he was criticised for the White House-authorised NSA telephone wiretapping programme, which some lawmakers have branded as illegal.
In 2005, Hayden was named deputy to National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, who himself was charged in the new position with shaking up the entire national intelligence apparatus in the wake of the failure to detect the September 11 plot. — AFP
