Wednesday, May 24, 2006

General Hayden supported by Senate Committee

Well, Michael Hayden has been approved by the Senate Committee to replace the failed Porter Goss as CIA Director. Since Goss is the first appointee that the Bush administration has actually removed from office for incompetence, this is a significant change. Unfortunately there is no indication that Hayden will be any better.

Not, at least, from the point of view of the American public.

Goss failed his masters by bringing in cronies to replace "disloyal" CIA individuals, but they were mostly fired CIA employees who were out to get back at those who got rid of them. The result was an administrative blood-bath of the best of the operations directorate supervisors.

Since Goss was himself a CIA officer for a number of years and then left, we can assume that he left because he had, himself, been one of the failed CIA officers. The individuals he chose to surround himself with were like-minded people. Placing him in charge of the CIA was an example of placing a failure in charge of the organization within which he had failed. It appears that he surrounded himself with like-minded failures when he returned as Director. This is the source of his failure as CIA Director.

So what does Michael Hayden bring to the job?

He has come up through a much more rigourous process. The military does not promote failures to four star officers - not even the Air Force. (Yeah, I'm retired Army.) What they have in Hayden is a competent leader who has proven that he is loyal to those who appointed him.

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