John Kerry: “I opposed the nomination of GEN Michael Hayden to serve as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. General Hayden…”

“I opposed the nomination of GEN Michael Hayden to serve as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. General Hayden has many qualifications as an intelligence professional, but I am sad to say that he is the wrong person for the job. Over the last years, the abuse of the CIA by the Rumsfeld Pentagon and the Cheney White House has hurt our national security and our credibility around the world, as the CIA was bullied into becoming a client of administration ideologues, yielding unfounded claims of ``slam dunk'' evidence for mythical weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I am not confident that General Hayden is the person best equipped to restore the CIA's independence and credibility, not just because he comes from Secretary Rumsfeld's Pentagon but because he was the Administration's principal spokesperson and defender of an illegal domestic spying program. We are reminded again and again of the administration's determination to keep the extent of their illegal domestic spying program secret. All we have to do is look at the news that the Department of Justice abruptly ended an investigation into the conduct of Department lawyers who approved the program--not because the approving lawyers were cleared of wrongdoing but because investigators were denied the information to conduct the investigation. The question before us is not whether we are committed to destroying terrorists and preventing terrorist attacks before they happen. We all are.…”