What CIA needs is new president

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http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/270019_carlson14.html

What CIA needs is new president

When the GOP chairman of the House Intelligence Committee immediately objected to the prospect of Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden heading the Central Intelligence Agency, I knew the president would appoint him. Nothing stiffens The Decider's spine like someone presuming to contradict him.

In some ways Hayden, former head of the National Security Agency, is actually a high-water mark in Bush headhunting. Hayden's resume, unlike those of Harriet Miers, Michael Brown and Michael Chertoff, is at least thematically related to the core requirements of the job.

Yet Rep. Peter Hoekstra, head of the intelligence committee, has valid reasons for calling Hayden the wrong man at the wrong place at the wrong time. It's not that he's a military man -- four CIA heads have been that -- but that the military has already grabbed an outsized amount of authority over intelligence under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who can shape it to his liking when it's in his own back yard. snip

The CIA could use some oversight, which it would have if Congress were still alive, and needs more analysts who know the countries, languages and gathering places of the terrorists we seek to defeat. Most of all, it needs a firewall making it impervious to manipulation by presidents and their minions. That's one thing we know won't happen on Bush's watch, no matter who sits at the top.