Hayden seen as top contender for CIA post

Low morale at the agency is a major concern.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- With Gen. Michael Hayden's expected nomination to run the CIA, a military officer would be in charge of every major spy agency.
The question is: Will the headstrong CIA salute as he presses ahead with reforms?
Government officials all the way up to President Bush have called this a time of transition at the CIA.
Its director, Porter Goss, announced his resignation Friday, as the CIA and the 15 other U.S. spy agencies still adjust to life in an era of intelligence overhauls ordered by Congress. A December 2004 law was the most sweeping redesign of U.S. intelligence since 1947.
Enter Hayden, top deputy for John Negroponte, director of National Intelligence. Hayen, considered the front-runner to succeed Goss, also is former National Security Agency chief.
California Rep. Jane Harman, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said that when she travels overseas, she hears concerns from civilian CIA professionals about whether the Defense Department is taking over intelligence operations. She shares those concerns.
"They see all these new DoD folks running around," Harman said in an interview Saturday. "There are probably more people in uniform running around the intelligence community than any other time in history."
The White House said Saturday there was a "collective agreement" that the CIA needed a new leader now. A presidential spokeswoman, Dana Perino, told reporters that Goss played an important role in the fight against terrorism and "helped transform the agency to meet the challenging times we're living in."
She added, "Reports that the president had lost confidence in Porter Goss are categorically untrue."
If Hayden were to get the nomination, military officers would run the major spy agencies, from the ultra-secret NSA to the Defense Intelligence Agency. Already, the Pentagon's Special Forces and other outfits are expanding their global role.
The next CIA chief must deal with low morale at the agency; uncertainties in the intelligence about hot spots such as Iran and North Korea; an uncontrolled insurgency in Iraq; and the pursuit -- fruitless so far -- of Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaida leaders.
Hard to predict impact
Hayden's potential impact at the CIA is difficult for many to predict because the agency's mission in Iran, Iraq and elsewhere hardly are transparent. John Pike, director of the GlobalSecurity.org think thank, said U.S. foreign policy has become a military policy -- a trend that began a decade ago.
With a general at the CIA's helm, "it would represent the culmination of the militarization of the agency that has been under way for some time," Pike said Saturday. "We are at war."
Among other pressure points, the incoming director will have to help sort out how the National Clandestine Service fits in with the CIA and other intelligence agencies. This organization, created in the intelligence overhaul, is made up largely of the CIA's spookiest operatives.
Goss' successor also will have to decide where the CIA's analysts will serve best: at the agency or new specialty centers, such as the National Counterterrorism Center.
The CIA wants to retain its most experienced staff and its pre-eminence, having once sat atop the spy pyramid because its director coordinated all U.S. intelligence. When the national intelligence director's office was opened last year, the CIA was relegated to a lesser position.
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