I spy.......................on americans
Hayden insists warrantless surveillance program legal
Updated 5/18/2006 12:51 PM ET E-mail | Save | Print | Subscribe to stories like this
Gen. Michael Hayden, nominee for the director of the Central Intelligence Agency position, is sworn in during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee.
WASHINGTON (AP) — CIA nominee Gen. Michael Hayden insisted on Thursday that the Bush administration's warrantless surveillance program was legal and that it was designed to ensnare terrorists — not spy on ordinary people.
ON DEADLINE: Hayden defends his words on NSA
"Clearly the privacy of American citizens is a concern constantly," the four-star Air Force general told the Senate Intelligence Committee at his confirmation hearing. "We always balance privacy and security."
Hayden was peppered by as many questions about the National Security Agency, the super-secret agency that he headed from 1999-2005, as about his visions for the CIA.
Senators grilled him on the NSA's eavesdropping without warrants on conversations and e-mails believed by the government to involve terrorism suspects, and reports of the tracking of millions of phone calls made and received by ordinary Americans.
After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush decided that more anti-terrorism surveillance was necessary than the NSA had been doing, said Hayden.
Hayden said he decided to go ahead with the then-covert surveillance program, which has been confirmed by Bush, believing it to be legal and necessary.
"When I had to make this personal decision in October 2001 ... the math was pretty straightforward. I could not not do this," Hayden said.
He said the surveillance program used a "probable cause" standard that made it unlikely that information about average Americans would be scrutinized.
But he declined to openly discuss reports that the NSA was engaged in even broader surveillance, including a story in USA TODAY that the NSA has been secretly collecting phone-call records of tens of millions of U.S. citizens.
Under questioning from Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, Hayden said he would only talk about the part of the program the president had confirmed.
"Is that the whole program?" asked Levin.
"I'm not at liberty to talk about that in open session," Hayden said. A closed-door session was planned for later in the day.