From www. kentimmerman.com

Reprinted from NewsMax.com
Former Rumsfeld Intel Aide Backs Hayden

Kenneth R. Timmerman

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

 WASHINGTON -- A former top U.S intelligence official, who helped Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reorganize Pentagon intelligence operations after 9/11, strongly backed yesterday's nomination of Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden to become director of the CIA, despite mounting congressional opposition.

 Richard Haver, who has held top intelligence jobs under four presidents, told Newsmax in an interview that Hayden's most important credential is his close relationship to National Intelligence Director John Negroponte.

 "If Negroponte trusts him and wants him, then Hayden is the guy for the job," Haver said.

Haver predicted that Hayden's decision not to resign his commission as a four-star general would not impact on his ability to lead the CIA at a time when the agency is in disarray.

"Whatever uniform Hayden is wearing to work won't matter," Haver said. "30 percent of the CIA will hate having a military officer over them. But then, 30 percent of them are wired the other way, anyway."

 Haver served as assistant secretary of defense for intelligence policy under Dick Cheney during the presidency of George H.W. Bush, and later, became special adviser to the assistant director of Central Intelligence for Intelligence and Production. During the Clinton years, Haver worked under three successive CIA directors, before joining the private sector in 1999.

 Except for Tenet, he said, the CIA has been run since the late 1980s by directors who have stayed on the job less than two years. "Would you buy stock in a company that turned over leadership like that?" he said.

 Critics of outgoing CIA Director Porter Goss have said he frequently complained of the long hours the CIA job required. While not joining those critics, Haver noted that leading the CIA "is a 24-hour a day job. You have to really want it. It's not like being a congressman. It's a killer job."

 The U.S. intelligence community faces dramatic challenges in the months and years ahead, he noted. "The bureaucracy will run itself, but it can't lead itself," Haver said.

While he felt it was "too early to judge" Negroponte's leadership as overall chief of the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, Americans would be able to judge for themselves if he failed.

 "The answer will be if we get surprised again, if we are attacked. Because someone always knows in advance that an attack is going to take place. So if there are no more surprises, then either he is very lucky, or he's got it right."

 Haver gave withering criticism of Congress in a speech yesterday at a private conference on intelligence in Bethesda, Md. The Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which created the DNI structure now headed by Negroponte, amounted to "rearranging the deck chairs," he said. "Output is the key, not the organizational chart," he said.

In an implicit criticism of Goss, he added: "The person at the top needs to get engaged."

 Negroponte and Hayden face a daunting task in rebuilding human intelligence capabilities, that were steadily dismantled during the Clinton administration, he told an audience at Intelcon. "The bureaucracy only agrees to change in desperate times of war."

 Haver blamed the steady erosion of intelligence community budgets in the mid-1990s for contributing to a series of intelligence failures that culminated in the Sept. 11 attacks.

In the end, "it's all about leadership and management," he said. "If the intelligence community is being managed well, you will hear no whining about sharing."

 Recalling his years at the agency under Robert Gates, a career intelligence officer who rose through the ranks to become CIA director from 1991-1993, he said: "I never heard Bob Gates in 10 years whining about sharing. When he needed something, he knew which office to call.

 "You don't need an act of congress or presidential authority to get things done," he added. "You just need a telephone. The only ones who whine about not having enough power are the ones who don't know how to use it."

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