Walk the Line

Walk the Line:

"Hard as it may be to distrust General Michael Hayden, the sad truth is that he's not trustworthy. Hayden, who testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence yesterday in his bid to become the next director of the CIA, made his reputation at the National Security Agency, which he led from 1999 to 2005, based on his relative openness. Reporters once kept at arms' length from the NSA's Fort Meade headquarters ate and drank at Hayden's dinner table. He fretted publicly that the Will Smith thriller Enemy of the State reflected an entrenched perception that his well-intentioned agency was a latter-day Big Brother. And his most important public statement issued as NSA Director inspired confidence that he took his responsibilities to safeguard civil liberties seriously. 'What I really need you to do is to talk to your constituents and find out where the American people want that line between security and liberty to be,' Hayden told a joint House-Senate hearing on pre-September 11 intelligence failures in October 2002. 'These are serious issues that the country addressed, and resolved to its satisfaction, once before in the mid-1970s. In light of the events of September 11, it is appropriate that we, as a country, readdress them. We need to get it right.'..."