Spying on our own / Congress needs to stop Bush on phone surveillance

(snip)
The fact that Gen. Hayden presided for years, presumably without question, over this mass surveillance and accumulation of data on the phone calls of millions of Americans, without court sanction, calls into question the wisdom of making him head of the CIA. Absent evidence to the contrary, Gen. Hayden is not someone with sufficient respect for the civil rights of Americans to be put into a position of such responsibility, given the role of the CIA in intelligence gathering at home and abroad. The CIA is forbidden to collect intelligence on American citizens; the NSA is forbidden by FISA to bug the phones and e-mail of American citizens without a court order. The NSA, under Gen. Hayden's leadership, ignored this requirement.

The administration underlined its disregard for logic and justice inherent in its approach to surveillance when the Justice Department informed a member of Congress on Wednesday that it had been forced to close an investigation into the conduct of government lawyers who approved the NSA's domestic surveillance program. The reason was the NSA had refused to give investigators the security clearance they needed for access to the necessary information. That is to say, an office of the U.S. Department of Justice was refused clearance by the U.S. National Security Agency to examine the activities of Justice lawyers ruling on the legality of NSA actions.

(snip)

Basically, in the face of an assault on Americans' rights to privacy by the Bush administration, rights based in the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights, the courts have been pushed out of the way. Mr. Bush ignored the requirement to obtain FISA court orders before bugging American citizens. Now the NSA feels free to ignore federal government procedures for the Justice Department to look into the legality of its actions.

We count on Sen. Specter and other members of Congress to pursue this issue with courage. They could start by questioning Gen. Hayden rigorously and then, absent evidence that he does not share the administration's disposition to ignore Americans' rights, turn him down for the CIA post. That would be a good start at rolling back this assault on Americans' rights.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06133/689760-192.stm

I see it doesn't mention he's a Pittsburgh native.