I personally don't have a problem with a military officer heading the CIA

[Bucky]

The first four CIA directors were, in fact, active duty officers.

Rear Adm. Sidney Souers, USNR - (1946)
Lt. Gen. Hoyt S. Vandenberg, USA - (1946 - 1947)
Rear Adm. Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, USN - (1947 - 1950)
Gen. Walter Bedell Smith, USA - (1950 - 1953)

The first CIA director to clean up some of the worst corruption in that agency was Stansfield Turner in the 1970s. The first civilian CIA director was Allen Dulles, who planned the Bay of Pigs debacle. A man's career path isn't a perfect determiner of his qualifications.

The problem is with placing a man in that office who has abetted in and supervised a criminal activity like the unauthorized wiretapping of Americans' phone calls and who can't even recognize it's unconstitutionality. It's not the brass on his shoulders, it's the tyrant in his heart that bothers me. A military officer is obliged to disobey and report illegal and unconstitutionaly orders. Hayden failed in that duty, perhaps in genuine ignorance of their illegality, but failed nonetheless. If he can't tell wrong from right, I just don't want him to hold power.

[Roland99]

1. There are HUGE, MASSIVE, ENORMOUS differences between then and now.

[xchrom]

2. hayden is a CRIMINAL.

why has 9-11 become an excuse to let criminal activity go?

[bowens43]

3. 'military officer is obliged to disobey and report'

ROFLMAO!!! You have GOT to be kidding!!!! If you buy that then I have some ocean front land in Kansas you may interested in.....

Yes , it IS about the brass on his shoulders. It's also about the MENTALITY of career military officers. They spend their entire lives seeking military solutions to political problems. It is NEVER appropriate to have a career military person head up a civilian, governmental organization.

[RaleighNCDUer]

10. The CIA may be outside military jurisdiction, but it has NEVER

been a 'civilian, governmental organization'.

From its inception as the military Office of Strategic Services it has been a part of the military. Its original function was as an adjunct to military operations. And if there is any single outstanding facet to the military mind, it is accountability. The chain of command ensures that the higher the decisions are made, the higher the responsibility for those decisions will lay. Even with today's politicized military, most military officers hew to a very strict code of responsibility and accountability. It's the neocon theorists who have never worn a uniform who most willingly violate the code of honor that the military are trained to respect.

That said, there are bad apples, and the civilian neocons are all too happy to find and co-opt them -- men like Col. North, who violated his oath to defend the constitution when he illegally set up the Iran-Contra deals despite orders from Congress not to; and men like Gen. Hayden, who broke the law to implement Bush's internal surveillance program.

Being from the military is not an automatic negative, any more than being a civilian is an automatic positive. What matters is the content of the man's character.

[MadHound]

4. I agree with you to a certain experience

But as the old adage says, if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. Military solutions to intelligence problems aren't neccessarily the right solutions, and with the overemphasis of the military and military solutions in this administration right now, adding more of the same ol' same ol' isn't going to help.

In addition, Hayden is very ill equipped to oversee human intelligence operations. Virtually all of his experience is with signals intelligence, machines and such. Yet the CIA is for the most part, a human intelligence agency:shrug:

[Vinnie From Indy]

11. I agree

Hayden is a technology and machine guy. His lack of human intelligence experience for an agency like the CIA is a bad fit.

[Dr. Jones]

5. The problem is that Bush is trying to destroy CIA and replace

it with DOD. They've had a growing intelligence wing in the DOD since 9/11. I believe Bush is trying to destroy CIA and hand intelligence over to DOD.

Stupid, stupid move. In Kennedy's day the CIA rebelled, and look what happened. Those guys play for keeps.

[JDPriestly]

6. As long as he has read and understood the 4th Amendment.

Hayden's problem is that he does not respect the civil rights of Americans. I object to him very much. I think it is especially suspicious that he is being nominated for the CIA post in an election year in which the Republicans' poll numbers are low. Who knows what their plan is? I don't trust a one of them for a minute.

[mike_c]

7. it's been said over and over so I won't repeat the details, but...

...Hayden will consolidate military authority over civilian intel analyses and consolidate the Pentagon's influence on intel, and by extension, policy making. I believe Porter Goss, Negroponte, and now Hayden are direct WH responses to the CIA voices that did not march in lockstep with the Office of Special Projects during the run up to war against Iraq. The WH views the CIA as a propaganda generating agency to some degree, and they're still pissed that not everyone was on message about Iraq. Truth means nothing to those criminals. Hayden is meant to be an enforcer who'll take orders like a good soldier.

[ewagner]

8. The original OSS

was organized and lead by Colonel William (Wild Bill) Donovan...he recruited a lot of skilled but very intelligent operatives from some of America's best colleges....some were considered playboys and were known within the military only as "Donavon's Dilettantes" ....it became the CIA in 1946.

Interestingly enough, Roosevelt created the OSS to get away from the competing intelligence agencies in the military. Roosevelt wanted his intelligence first hand and unvarnished...reporting directly to him, not filtered through the Departments of the Army or Navy (there was no Air Force at that time)

For that reason, I am opposed to CIA being run by an active-duty military man...if he's retired, okay but active? No...

[Coastie for Truth]

9. Most of the civilian heads of the CIA

were either "politicians" or the "old, New England, aristocratic elite".

Hayden is a "blue collar" guy from a "shot and a beer" family (his father was a welder in "The Mill" and a member of the United Steel Workers of America), he grew up in a real, blue collar, shot and a beer, Joe Six Pack community (Pittsburgh PA), and went to a real operation bootstrap, working class college (Duquesne University of the Holy Ghost).

We came out of that same smokey valley, and I got my MBA at Duquesne, and my sister got her JD at Duquesne -- and we probably sat in the same bleachers at Forbes Field and grew up listening to Rege Cordic on the old KDKA.

He is no elitist John Bolten type.

His role in the wire tapping MUST be pursued.

But, compared to Bushie's Yalie buddies and his Texas buddies (you want John Cornyn? Alberto Gonzales?) - Hayden may be the lesser of the evils.