Indeed
By David Corn
05/08/06 “The Guardian” – – By nominating Michael Hayden, the former chief of the National Security Agency (the US government’s super-secret eavesdropping outfit), to replace Porter Goss as CIA director, Bush is waving a red cape in front of his critics and daring them to charge.
Hayden, who is now the deputy director of national intelligence (the number two man in the office overseeing the entire US intelligence community), ran the NSA when Bush authorized domestic warrantless wiretapping of American citizens and residents. When news of this programme broke last year, a firestorm of controversy ensued. In the United States, government investigators working on an intelligence case generally have to obtain a court order (from a secret court) in order to intercept a person’s phone calls or emails within the United States. The Bush administration revealed little about this programme, but apparently it targeted communications between persons in America and those in other countries and presumably these communications involved al Qaeda suspects. </i>
This is gonna be a dogfight. Oh boy.
