CIA director Michael Hayden reportedly banned water-boarding last year.(File photo) (Getty/AFP: Win McNamee)
Top Democrat To Obama: Keep Bush's Intel Chiefs
-- ABC News
-- ABC News
ABC News' Jonathan Karl Reports: First Gates, Now Hayden?
The Democratic chairman of the House Intelligence Committee says President-elect Barack Obama should keep President Bush's intelligence chiefs for at least six months to ensure a smooth transition.
It's a move that would likely cause a revolt on the left.
Keeping Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and Director of the CIA Mike Hayden would be hugely controversial among many of Obama's core supporters.
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Obama May Keep CIA Chief. Ugggh. -- The Danger Room
U.S. News says that team Obama might ask CIA chief Michael Hayden to stay on for a while. Let's hope not. Not only does the man have a history of condoning torture and misleading Congress, as Think Progress notes. But, in his role as head of the National Security Agency, he made a pair of titanic blunders.
Before 9/11, Hayden shut down virtually all of the domestic eavesdropping efforts -- even though he could have gotten warrants to do so from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Efforts to snoop on known Al Qaeda operatives, like 9/11 hijackers Khalid al-Midhar and Salem al-Hazmi, were cut short. "Hayden's decision to secretly turn a deaf ear to nearly all international conversations entering and leaving the U.S. -- even when they involved known terrorists with the country -- would have momentous consequences," NSA-watcher James Bamford writes in his latest book, The Shadow Factory.
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