How dumb would Hayden CIA nomination be?

I’m inclined to say “spectacularly dumb”.

Baker and Linzer report in today’s WaPo:

Barring a change of heart, aides expect Bush to name Hayden tomorrow as his choice to succeed CIA director Porter J. Goss, who resigned under pressure Friday. Hayden, a former director of the National Security Agency and now deputy director of national intelligence, has become the most forceful defender of Bush’s eavesdropping program since its disclosure in December.

Rather than steer away from a Hayden nomination because of the controversy, the White House seems ready for a new fight over it, convinced that it has public support and that Democrats opposing Hayden’s confirmation would risk looking weak on terrorism.

Well, at least that’s the chosen spin.

Yes, that’s the Gen. Hayden whose “forceful defen[se]” of the the illegal NSA spying program included repeatedly, insistently arguing with a reporter that “probable cause” is not the evidentiary standard required by the Fourth Amendment, while reassuring us that

Gen. Hayden [indignant]: “Just to be very clear … mmkay… and believe me, if there’s any Amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it’s the Fourth. Alright? And it is a reasonableness standard in the Fourth Amendment. The constitutional standard is ‘reasonable’”

Text of the Fourth Amendment in its entirety (emphasis added):

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Rove et al. have boasted since the NSA scandal broke that they welcome a public debate on it, and this piece is rife with such *SWHO quotes. They are belied, (as Glenn Greenwald has repeatedly pointed out in calling their bluff) by the Bush admin’s strenuous stonewalling of any and all Congressional investigations and/or public disclosure of any details, threats of legal action against reporters and leakers, and polls that, when properly phrased to include the crucial issues of potential illegality/unconstitutionality and the warrantless nature of the surveillance involved, consistently show either near or actual pluralities/majorities oppose it.

Still, this desperation strategy may indeed well be their last, best hope for the upcoming mid-terms. What “better” option remains available than continued reliance on a supine Repub Congress’s ongoing abdication of its Constitutional oversight duties and the pliant media’s unrelenting willingness to frame things in Bush-authored narratives, e.g. (from the linked article),

The White House came to see [or pretend to--Gary] the program as a political boon because polls showed many voters are not concerned about the civil liberties issues and believe it would only target violent extremists. “When you push even the harshest critic, even they say, ‘Yeah, we should be listening to al-Qaeda,’ ” a senior administration official said yesterday. “So from that perspective, that’s a winning [issue] and we’re on the side of the public.” [Remember when they swore they'd always do what they considered right, and damn the polls? -- Gary]

Certainly, ‘even the harshest critic’ agrees, ‘Yeah, we should be listening to al-Qaeda,’ which was never in dispute, but is the chosen diversion from what’s actually scandalous about the NSA program (hints: illegality, unconstitutionality, Bush self-declaration to be above the law). Much depends on the degree to which media remain willing to uncritically regurgitate the Rovian framing, as in the preceding excerpt.

Given all the above, I found this part tragically hilarious:

Bush was especially impressed with Hayden’s unrelenting public defense of the surveillance program, which began under his direction at the NSA after Sept. 11. Under the program, the NSA monitors telephone calls and e-mail between the United States and overseas when one participant is suspected of links to terrorists [Gee, didn’t they originally tell us one participant had to be a “known terrorist”? In fact, wasn’t it Fearless Leader himself who told us that?—Gary]. The administration asserted that it did not need court approval because of the president’s inherent war powers, but critics on the left and right said the program violated the law.

So, Bush was “especially impressed with Hayden’s unrelenting public defense”, which consisted of stonewalling, misrepresentations and rank ignorance of the Constitution while contrarily claiming special expertise, huh?

Go Figure.

*”Senior White House Official”

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