Bush under fire over CIA choice

President Bush came in for blistering criticism from both Republican and Democratic intelligence experts yesterday over his apparent intention to name a seasoned Air Force General as the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency following the sudden resignation of the outgoing chief, Porter Goss, on Friday.

The brewing battle is essentially a turf war between the US military, which already controls 80 per cent of the country's intelligence resources, and the traditionally civilian leadership at the CIA, which feels the agency has been both over-politicised and deeply demoralised in the wake of the September 11 attacks - which it failed to prevent - and the intelligence farrago surrounding the Iraq war.

It now promises to turn into an intense political fight, too.

All weekend the White House floated the name of General Michael Hayden, the former head of the National Security Agency, as Mr Goss's successor pending an official announcement from the President that could come as early as today.

The Democrats were quick to say they would give General Hayden a good grilling during any confirmation hearings, not least because he was the man in charge of a controversial - and, until last December, secret - counter-terrorist wiretapping operation that bypassed the usual legal channels.

Yesterday, however, the chorus of disapproval extended to the Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, who told a television interviewer: "We should not have a military person leading a civilian agency at this time...

he is the wrong person at the wrong place at the wrong time."Democrats were quick to add their own similar objections.

"You can' t have the military control most of the major aspects of intelligence," Senator Dianne Feinstein of California said.

The CIA, she added, "is a civilian agency and is meant to be a civilian agency."

Over the past 18 months, the Bush administration has sought to recast the entire intelligence apparatus of the United States, appointing John Negroponte, the former Ambassador to Iraq and the United Nations, to the new point of director of national intelligence and placing no fewer than 18 agencies, including the CIA, under his jurisdiction.

In Mr Negroponte's vision, the CIA should all but give up its traditional role of intelligence analysis and focus instead on field operations - stealing secrets from foreign governments and attempting to thwart plots to launch attacks on US targets at home and abroad.

General Hayden is currently Mr Negroponte's deputy.

Many CIA veterans point to a severe brain drain at the agency and say that the analysis function is essential.

US presidents have traditionally relied on their CIA chiefs to give them unvarnished assessments of the state of the world so they can make their policy decisions.

Several critics have accused the Bush administration of wilfully politicising the pre-war intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to make a compelling public case for invasion, and then blaming the CIA when those weapons did not materialise.

- INDEPENDENT