Inviting Hayden to comment on regulation of NSA is like having Madoff comment on regulating Wall St.
Michael Hayden, Bob Schieffer and the media's reverence of national security officials
Glenn Greenwald
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The person who secretly implemented that illegal domestic spying program was retired Gen. Michael Hayden, then Bush's NSA director. That's the very same Michael Hayden who is now frequently presented by US television outlets as the authority and expert on the current NSA controversy - all without ever mentioning the central role he played in overseeing that illegal warrantless eavesdropping program.
As Marcy Wheeler noted: "the 2009 Draft NSA IG Report that Snowden leaked (and the Guardian published) provided new details about how Hayden made the final decision to continue the illegal wiretapping program even after DOJ's top lawyers judged it illegal in 2004. Edward Snowden leaked new details of Michael Hayden's crime."
The Twitter commentator sysprog3 put it this way:
In other words, Hayden has a clear financial stake in the very NSA debates he's put on television to adjudicate. And while he's sometimes identified as a principal of the Chertoff Group, what that means - the conflicts of interest it creates in the very debates in which he's participating - is almost never mentioned. That's because one inviolable rule for establishment TV hosts like Bob Schieffer is that US military officials must be treated with the greatest reverence and must never be meaningfully challenged
.........About Snowden, the tough, adversarial TV reporter asked Hayden: "Do you think he is a traitor, would you go that far?" He then ended his prayer session devoted to Hayden with this exchange about the recent proposal in the House to ban the NSA's bulk collection of phone records:
"BOB SCHIEFFER: But would the National security be damaged if that happened?
"GENERAL MICHAEL HAYDEN: Oh, absolutely, absolutely.
"BOB SCHIEFFER: All right. Well, General, it's always good to have you."
Bob Schieffer is a more slavish, shameless spokesman for the NSA than anyone actually employed by that agency. But what one really finds here is a reverence for military officials like Michael Hayden so extreme that it's actually uncomfortable to watch.
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MORE:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/12/michael-hayden-nsa-media-reverence
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So he's fine with most Democrats. Message over messenger, so long as the message is the correct one. 