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Feb. 1, 2006 - It’s a day they’ve been waiting for: on Thursday, Bush administration critics in Congress will get the chance to grill intelligence officials in public about the National Security Agency’s warrantless monitoring of communications between suspected Al Qaeda operatives overseas and people they contact inside the United States.
National Intelligence Director John Negroponte and his principal deputy, Gen. Michael Hayden, are scheduled to appear with several other top intelligence officials at what was supposed to be a routine Senate Intelligence Committee hearing to discuss the intelligence community’s assessment of current threats to the United States, including terrorist attacks and nuclear proliferation. However, congressional sources say Democrats on the Senate committee plan to use the hearing to grill officials about alleged NSA domestic surveillance. They are particularly interested in questioning Hayden, who before joining Negroponte’s office, served as NSA director. The controversial NSA monitoring program was launched under his command.
Democrats critical of the reported NSA surveillance program have been formulating questions on at least two themes that could prove awkward for Hayden, an Air Force officer who as NSA chief went out of his way to demystify some of the ultrasecretive agency’s activities by making public speeches and opening the doors of agency headquarters at Fort Meade, Md., to limited media access. One key issue will be a recent speech Hayden made at the National Press Club in which he defended NSA’s antiterror program. Some critics say the speech amounted to an engagement in political debate, a role that some view as inappropriate for a professional intelligence officer. Questions will also be raised about whether Hayden accurately characterized NSA’s policies on domestic surveillance in testimony he gave to Congress after the September 11 attacks.
Congressional officials, who asked not to be identified because of political sensitivities, said that Democrats on the intelligence committee had been preparing extensively for questioning about the NSA program at Thursday’s hearing, though it was always possible they could decide at the last minute to avoid the subject. A spokesman for Hayden’s office had no immediate comment.
Bush administration critics have already used the blogosphere to raise some of the questions Hayden may face at the hearing. On Thinkprogress.org, former Clinton administration national-security official Morton Halperin and associate Michael Fuchs suggest that in an Oct. 17, 2002, hearing before the joint congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks, Hayden “misled Congress” when he testified “that any surveillance of persons in the United States was done consistent with FISA." (FISA is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that requires investigators to obtain warrants from a specific secret court before conducting surveillance of American citizens and others inside the United States.) According to Halperin and Fuchs, at the time Hayden made the statement, he “was fully aware of the presidential order to conduct warrantless domestic spying issued the previous year.”
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