Fomer CIA Dir Hayden: "I never felt I had any impediment in briefing Congress"

[sabra]

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2009/07/former_cia_director_no_one_tol.html

The man who ran the CIA from 2006 through January says he wasn't told by then-vice president Dick Cheney not to brief Congress about a covert program aimed at members of al-Qaida, NPR's Mary Louise Kelly reports.

Gen. Mike Hayden's statement is at odds with a New York Times report Sunday that said the CIA:

Withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency's director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.

Hayden tells Mary Louise that "I never felt I had any impediment in briefing Congress."

But what about George Tenet?

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jul/12/intel-official-congress-not-briefed-on-cia-program/?feat=home_headlines

Official: Cheney, Tenet hid CIA program

Top Bush administration officials, including former CIA Director George J. Tenet and former Vice President Dick Cheney, opted not to brief Congress on a secret program belatedly disclosed to Congress last month by CIA Director Leon E. Panetta, according to an intelligence official with direct knowledge of the program.

The official, who asked not to be named because of the classified nature of the program, said that the decision to keep the details of the program secret in the past was made in part because the program remained "in the capability stage," meaning it had been developed but not necessarily implemented.

"These activities lasted, if you will, for years," this official said. "There were other conversations about whether this should be taken to Congress. The same decision was made again by senior officials at the time."

[jimshoes]

1. Why not let's clear the air on the matter and get

some of these people under oath and then let them tell us everything they knew or did or didn't do.

[H2O Man]

2. Mike Hayden

is a professional liar. Lying would not be viewed as an impediment to him.

[gratuitous]

3. Read the careful parsing of words

The only way an "impediment" would have come up in the briefing to Congress would have been if some congress critter asked Hayden a direct question about a secret program that Congress didn't know anything about. Then there might have been some impediment to the briefing. But as long as Congress didn't know about a secret program, it's unlikely anyone on the committee - and certainly none of the Republican majority - would have brought it up. Hayden was dealing from a stacked deck, and he knows it. He just hopes we're too stupid to notice.