Hayden: "We Could Have Done an Awful Lot Better", backs off claim he made last week

[maddezmom]

Hayden: "We Could Have Done an Awful Lot Better"
By Paul Kiel - December 12, 2007, 2:12PM
What a difference a scandal makes. Coming out of his briefing to the House intelligence committee today, CIA Director Michael Hayden was penitent: "particularly at the time of the destruction we could have done an awful lot better at keeping the committee alerted and informed."

It's a markedly different tone from the one he took last week. Then, he released a statement about the tapes' destruction and claimed that the intelligence committees had received ample notification of the intention to destroy the tapes and then their actual destruction. Both committees said that wasn't true. Now he apparently agrees.

Today was the second of Hayden's initial briefings on the scandal. Yesterday's was to the Senate intelligence committee, where he said that even though he's in charge at the CIA, he's not really the guy to be talking to: "Other people in the agency know about this far better than I." Hayden says he learned of the tapes' destruction as far back as last year, when he was the principal deputy director of national intelligence and before he took over at the CIA in May of 2006.

more:http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004889.php

[maddezmom]

1. CIA kept Congress in the dark, lawmakers say

WASHINGTON — The CIA failed to fully inform Congress that it was videotaping the harsh interrogations of terrorist suspects and that it destroyed the tapes in 2005, the bipartisan leaders of the House Intelligence Committee said today.

"Our committee was not informed, has not been kept informed and we are very frustrated about that issue," said Chairman Sylvestre Reyes, D-Texas, after a three-hour closed-door meeting with CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden. That meeting, he said, "is just the first step in what we feel is going to be a long-term investigation.

That probe will include calling other witnesses, including Hayden predecessors George Tenet and Porter Goss, and John Negroponte, the former Director of National Intelligence, said Rep. Peter Hoekstra, the panel's senior Republican. Reyes said he would also call on Jose Rodriguez, the former CIA director of operations who actually had the tapes destroyed.

Hayden acknowledged that "particularly at the time of the destruction we could have done an awful lot better at keeping the committee alerted and informed."


more:http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chronicle/5370792.html