Secretive Agency Under the Spotlight

Joby Warrick
Washington Post
Saturday, July 5, 2008

Soon after accepting the post of CIA director two years ago, Michael V. Hayden set an unusual goal for his scandal-beset agency: virtual invisibility.

“CIA needs to get out of the news as source or subject,” he said in an internal memo to his staff in 2006.

Two years later, that goal is far from met, as Hayden has tacitly acknowledged. In a retirement ceremony last month marking the end of his military career, the Air Force general stressed the need for the agency to “stay in the shadows” while ignoring what he called the “sometimes shrill and uninformed voices of criticism.”

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The comment reflected the difficulties that Hayden’s CIA faces in trying to turn the corner on six years of controversy at the same time that it attempts sweeping internal changes. While the agency’s leadership has sought a return to normal and has launched initiatives intended to improve ties with lawmakers and foreign allies, it finds itself in the cross hairs of a Congress determined to force a reckoning over the agency’s past intelligence failures and its conduct in the fight against terrorism.

In recent weeks, both the House and the Senate have intensified their scrutiny of the CIA’s treatment of detainees, with Senate investigators launching new inquiries into whether agency lawyers influenced the Defense Department’s decision to use harsh interrogation techniques in the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Both Congress and the Justice Department are examining whether top CIA officers broke the law in ordering the destruction of videotapes that recorded the waterboarding of al-Qaeda suspects.

At the same time, lawmakers are attempting to set new limits on how the CIA deals with suspected terrorists in the future, and even who at the agency may interrogate them. One measure would ban the CIA from using contractors to question detainees, while another would require prompt notification of the International Committee of the Red Cross when a new prisoner enters CIA custody. A third would again seek to limit CIA interrogators to a shortlist of Army-approved tactics, a restriction approved last year by Congress but vetoed by President Bush.

Full article here.

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