Washington – With confirmation hearings to begin perhaps in a week, Gen. Michael Hayden spent Tuesday on Capitol Hill hoping to win over lawmakers wary about his nomination to lead the CIA.
Hayden met privately and spoke by telephone with members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, whose chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the hearings could start as early as next Tuesday.
There was some early evidence, meanwhile, that a White House push to ease concerns on the nomination was making progress.
Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, a Republican on the Intelligence Committee who had criticized President Bush’s selection of a military officer as CIA director, discussed his concerns with Hayden in a private meeting Monday night. Lindsay Taylor Mabry, a spokeswoman for Chambliss, later called the talk “candid” but said the senator’s posture “is not adversarial at all, and Gen. Hayden knows that.”
Among those with whom Hayden met Tuesday was Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, a Democratic member of the committee, who said afterward that she had pressed him about resigning from the military and that “he said he would consider it,” Bloomberg News reported.
In the House, which will play no role in the confirmation process, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, the majority leader, broke with other top Republicans on Tuesday and indicated support for the nomination.
“The question in my mind is, ‘Is he qualified to lead this agency and to reform this agency to meet the threats that we now face and the threats that we will face in the future?”‘ Boehner told reporters. “And from where I sit, it appears that he is clearly qualified to do that.”
The Senate overwhelmingly confirmed Hayden last spring as principal deputy to John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence. But that vote preceded the disclosure that the National Security Agency, which Hayden headed until last year, had been secretly wiretapping international phone calls of terrorism suspects in the United States without obtaining warrants.
Hayden has vigorously defended the NSA effort, authorized by Bush.