Hayden's kind of lying was enough to earn another
spymaster a suspended sentence in the 1970s
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/01/26/hayden-broke-law
26 January 2006 By Morton H. Halperin and Michael ****hs
Former NSA Director Hayden Lied To Congress
And Broke The Law
[Our guest blogger, Morton Halperin (1), was Director of Policy
Planning Staff at the State Department and served on the National
Security Council under President Clinton. He also served as Deputy
Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Johnson.]
The Bush administration has pulled out all the stops in attempting
to defend the NSA's warrantless domestic spying program. After
speeches by President Bush and Attorney General Gonzales, Deputy
Director of National Intelligence and former NSA Director General
Michael Hayden took another crack at the defense in a speech on
Monday (2). He's not exactly the ideal choice to restore the
administration's credibility.
As Think Progress do***ented back in December (3), Hayden
misled Congress. In his 17 Oct. 2002 testimony (4), he told a
committee investigating the 9/11 attacks that any surveillance of
persons in the United States was done consistent with FISA.
At the time of his statements, Hayden was fully aware of the
presidential order to conduct warrantless domestic spying issued
the previous year. But Hayden didn't feel as though he needed
to share that with Congress. Apparently, Hayden believed that
he had been legally authorized to conduct the surveillance, but told
Congress that he had no authority to do exactly what he was doing.
The Fraud and False Statements (5) statute (18 U.S.C. 1001) make
Hayden's misleading statements to Congress illegal.
Hayden's fate lies with the tale of another spymaster, Nixon-era
CIA Director Richard Helms.
Testifying under oath before a hearing of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee in 1973, Richard Helms claimed that CIA
was not involved in attempts to overthrow Salvador Allende of
Chile :
SEN. SYMINGTON : Did you try in the Central Intelligence
agency to overthrow the government of Chile ?
MR. HELMS : No, sir.
SEN. SYMINGTON : Did you have any money passed to the
opponents of Allende ?
MR. HELMS : No, sir.
By the time Helms was called to testify again, CIA activities in
Chile had become public knowledge. In 1977, Richard Helms
pleaded no contest to charges of lying to Congress and served
a suspended sentence.
Four years passed between Richard Helms' false testimony before
Congress and his guilty plea. Hayden's congressional lying occurred
in 2002. It's now four years later. Time to fess up, General.
http://thinkprogress.org/2006/01/26/hayden-broke-law/
1) Morton H. Halperin, Senior Fellow and Director of Security
and Peace Initiative
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?cid={E9245FE4-9A2B-43C7-A521-5D6
FF2E06E03}&bin_id={F559DADC-612D-4E30-A32C-E1D2A5D74263}
2) http://www.dni.gov/release_letter_012306.html
3) FLASHBACK : Director of National Security Agency Misled Congress
http://thinkprogress.org/2005/12/19/nsa-director
4) Do***ents From Congress' Joint Inquiry into 9/11
Transcript of hearing 17 Oct 2002
http://www.thememoryhole.org/911/hearings/911hearing-trans-oct17.htm
5) http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/ts_search.pl?title=18&sec=1001
------------------------------------
Quite an Understatement :
"CIA exit leaves many questions."
How About, What the Heck is Going on
in Bush's Politburo and Shadow Government ?
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/news_theswamp/2006/05/cia_resignation.ht
ml
5 May 2006 By Frank James
CIA exit leaves many questions
The sudden resignation of CIA director ****ter Goss today
left Wa****ngton re****ters wanting to know more, much more.
In a brief Oval Office session with the White House press corps,
neither President Bush or Goss, both Yalies, gave a reason for
the CIA director's departure, which only served to raise journalistic
suspicions.
So the speculation began immediately that Goss may have been
a victim of the White House shake-up triggered by new chief-of-
staff Joshua Bolten.
But Goss's name hadn't been mentioned as someone who'd be made
to walk the plank by Bolten. So that added to the surprise.
That led to other speculation that maybe it wasn't about Bolten at all.
This being the world of spooks we're talking about, intrigue rules the
day.
Maybe it had to do with the third-highest ranked CIA official,
someone Goss named to that post last year, Kyle Foggo.
Foggo just happens to be under investigation as part of a federal
probe connected to the Randy "Duke" Cunningham bribery scandal
in which Cunnigham, a former California Republican congressman,
was convicted.
Given all the headaches he has faced, I wonder if Goss, once a
CIA agent himself and now 67, regrets not leaving public service
sooner. After all, after being named CIA director, the job he took
was downgraded when the Bush administration, following the
recommentations of the 9/11 commission, created the national
intelligence director, a post filled by long-time diplomat John
Negroponte.
In 2002, I interviewed him for a short profile in the Chicago Tribune
after Bush asked him to co-chair a joint investigation by the House
and Senate intelligence committees on intelligence failures before 9/11.
He had actually been planning on retiring then but the president asked
him to stay on. As I wrote then, "his plan was to join his wife, Mariel,
full time in growing organic produce and raising Piedmontese cattle,
known for their low-fat meat, on their small Virginia farm."
Since he became CIA director, there've been plenty of stories that
Goss, a former Republican congressman who represented a wealthy
district on Florida's Gulf Coast, has hurt the agency's morale in
a number of ways.
First, he brought with him some of his congressional staffers who
were viewed as political types who put politics over pure intelligence
work.
A number of senior intelligence professionals at the agency left after
Goss took over in September 2004, not even two years ago.
In recent weeks, Goss announced a crackdown on leaks at the agency,
driven by the revelation that secret CIA flights were used to ferry terror
suspects to equally secret CIA prisons in Europe.
Dana Priest of the Wa****ngton Post recently won a Pulitzer Prize for
breaking that story and suspicions within the Bush administration
turned to a person or persons at the CIA as sources for the story.
Mary McCarthy a CIA official was fired. She has denied being
the source of the prison story.
In any event, the weekend likely started early for a lot of people
over at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. when they heard the news
that the director was stepping down.
The only damper on the good feelings would be the uncertainty
over who comes next since the president hasn't named a replacement.
http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/news_theswamp/2006/05/cia_resignation.ht
ml
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