Wiretapping preoccupied Hayden at NSA (at expense of reform agenda)

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.hayden14may14,0,7602442.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines

Wiretapping preoccupied Hayden at NSA
His focus was on surveillance at expense of reform agenda

WASHINGTON // For Air Force Gen. Michael V. Hayden, like many other Americans, Sept. 11 was a life-changing event.

He had arrived at the National Security Agency two years earlier with a mandate to drag, belatedly, the once-cutting-edge agency into the Internet era. But after the attacks, Hayden shifted focus to what would become known as the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program. His broader reform plans, say former NSA officials, were never realized.

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Hayden presented the plan for a warrantless program to a meeting of his senior managers in October 2001. Everyone in the room seemed to agree that, amid concerns about future attacks, it would be irresponsible not to employ technology that might help hunt down al-Qaida operatives.

According to former officials familiar with the meeting, legal concerns dominated the discussion, but Hayden was confident that with Bush's authorization under the president's wartime powers, the program would be legal. Such presidential "findings," as the documents are called, are often used for covert activity.

...

"On the one hand, you applaud his instinct in understanding this was very serious and different," one former senior intelligence official said of Hayden's immersion in the warrantless surveillance program. "On the other hand, there were so many other enterprise things that got no attention."