The new CIA chief
I personally believe Michael Hayden is likely a highly intelligent and capable man. I'm also highly suspicious of the NSA's wiretapping/surveillance and data collection – programs that Hayden has designed and overseen since 9/11. So when FP interviewed Michael Scheuer, who served in the CIA for more than 20 years and wrote Imperial Hubris, earlier ...
I personally believe Michael Hayden is likely a highly intelligent and capable man. I'm also highly suspicious of the NSA's wiretapping/surveillance and data collection - programs that Hayden has designed and overseen since 9/11. So when FP interviewed Michael Scheuer, who served in the CIA for more than 20 years and wrote Imperial Hubris, earlier this month, I was most interested - troubled - by this answer:
FOREIGN POLICY: Is Michael Hayden the right choice for the CIA?
Michael Scheuer: No. As a professional intelligence officer, the last people you want to report to are generals and diplomats. And if General Hayden comes to the CIA, we’ll have Mr. Negroponte [a career diplomat] as head of the community, and a general as the head of the CIA. They are not particularly good at taking bad news to the president, in the experience of most intelligence officers. So General Hayden is not the right choice. I also think that it kind of beggars the imagination in the sense that every one of the commissions that investigated 9/11 or Iraq said that we didn’t have enough HUMINT [human intelligence], and now we’re going to have 16 or 17 intelligence community components—not one of which will have anyone with HUMINT experience at its head.
I personally believe Michael Hayden is likely a highly intelligent and capable man. I'm also highly suspicious of the NSA's wiretapping/surveillance and data collection – programs that Hayden has designed and overseen since 9/11. So when FP interviewed Michael Scheuer, who served in the CIA for more than 20 years and wrote Imperial Hubris, earlier this month, I was most interested – troubled – by this answer:
FOREIGN POLICY: Is Michael Hayden the right choice for the CIA?
Michael Scheuer: No. As a professional intelligence officer, the last people you want to report to are generals and diplomats. And if General Hayden comes to the CIA, we’ll have Mr. Negroponte [a career diplomat] as head of the community, and a general as the head of the CIA. They are not particularly good at taking bad news to the president, in the experience of most intelligence officers. So General Hayden is not the right choice. I also think that it kind of beggars the imagination in the sense that every one of the commissions that investigated 9/11 or Iraq said that we didn’t have enough HUMINT [human intelligence], and now we’re going to have 16 or 17 intelligence community components—not one of which will have anyone with HUMINT experience at its head.
It's worth reading the rest of it. He talks about why intelligence on Iran is so poor, why he thinks Iraq is "finished," and why old Soviet nukes should keep you up at night.
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