Is Gen. Michael Hayden best fit to lead troubled CIA?

Washington and the nation are abuzz over hearings to begin this week in the U.S. Senate on the nomination of Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden to direct the Central Intelligence Agency.
The attention is warranted; the hearings are critical.
Senators must investigate Hayden aggressively and comprehensively to ensure to Americans that he is the best fit to lead one of the nation's most critical cogs in the ongoing war on terror.
Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency who left the agency last April to become deputy director of national intelligence, warrants particularly close scrutiny on several fronts.
First, he must be able to reassure the nation that a massive campaign to collect phone records of tens of millions of Americans under his watch at NSA constituted a legitimate and necessary tool to target potential al-Qaida operatives, not an overzealous effort to rip asunder privacy protections guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
He must also demonstrate that he has the fortitude to work to salvage an agency whose reputation has been tattered and sullied in recent months and years over a string of embarrassing personnel debacles and public relations fiascoes. He must prove that he can restore public confidence in the CIA and that he would be a more capable leader than his immediate predecessor, Porter Goss, who resigned without reason last week.
The Bush defense
President Bush has been quick to defend the embattled nominee. In his radio address over the weekend, the president said, "The government does not listen to domestic phone calls without court approval. We are not trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans."
Some on Capitol Hill -- including some otherwise loyal Bush Republicans -- question the president's premise and the legality of the phone interceptions. They should continue to do so.
After all, AT & amp;T, Verizon and BellSouth gave the NSA extraordinary access to their records. One company -- Qwest -- did not. Qwest attorneys rightfully refused to surrender the records because NSA failed to produce either a warrant or approval from a special court established to handle surveillance matters. Attorneys concluded that the requests violated privacy provisions in the federal Telecommunications Act.
It is now incumbent upon Hayden to justify the draconian action. He must prove that he has a clear understanding of the provisions of Fourth Amendment privacy protections. A recent exchange with a Knight Ridder Newspapers reporter leaves the door wide open for doubt. In it, Hayden refused to acknowledge that search and seizures of property and records of private Americans must be predicated upon probable cause. Such apparent slipshod knowledge of cornerstone constitutional protections does little to build bedrock confidence in the nominee.
Other challenges for CIA chief
NSA questions aside, the CIA needs a leader who can restore internal morale and public trust. The beleaguered agency has been trying to recover from a string of departures of senior officers over Goss' leadership style, low morale and fallout from intelligence failures over Iraq and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The man Goss first selected to become the CIA's executive director, Michael Kostiw, had to turn down the job when it surfaced he had been caught shoplifting bacon.
Just last week, CIA Executive Director Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, was forced to suddenly retire amid a widening investigation into his role in a laundry list of allegations of corruption, bribery and prostitution.
It is also imperative that Hayden gets close scrutiny because of the enduring importance of the CIA, in spite of the dilution of its power through a restructured federal intelligence network. The CIA still is the top domestic surveillance organ in that network and its work -- aiding efforts to stabilize Iraq and Afghanistan, capture Osama bin Laden and crush al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations -- is far too critical to get sideswiped by internal sniping and criminal distractions.
It is also far too important an agency to entrust to anyone who would give any thought to stomping over civil liberties of everyday Americans without just and probable cause.