The Republican chairman of the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, Pete Hoekstra, opposes the appointment of Air Force Lieutenant General Michael Hayden to head the CIA. Bloomberg reports:

“I’ve got a lot of respect for Mike Hayden, and he’s done a good job, but I do believe he’s the wrong person at the wrong place at the wrong time,” said U.S. Representative Pete Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican. “We should not have a military person leading a civilian agency at this time.”

Tension between Defense Department and civilian intelligence agencies is high now in the wake of spying failures before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S. and during the run- up to the Iraq war, Hoekstra said. Hayden’s nomination would imply that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has too much power over intelligence, the chairman said.

“Putting a general in charge, regardless of how good Mike is, is going to send the wrong signal through the agency here in Washington and also to our agents around the world,” he said.

Time was when a Republican like Hoekstra left the reservation and publicly opposed some White House policy, within a few hours (and after being called to the White House for a chat) he’d be back in front of cameras claiming he was misquoted. He’s just fine with Policy X after all. It will be interesting to see if Hoekstra will be persuaded to back down.

If not, Hayden’s nomination hearings might be fun.

Nedra Pickler reports for the AP:

If Hayden were to get the nomination, military officers would run the major spy agencies in the United States, from the ultra-secret National Security Agency to the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The Pentagon already controls more than 80 percent of the intelligence budget.

“You can’t have the military control most of the major aspects of intelligence,” said Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who is on the Senate Intelligence Committee. The CIA “is a civilian agency and is meant to be a civilian agency,” she said on ABC’s “This Week.”

A second committee member, GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, added, “I think the fact that he is a part of the military today would be the major problem.”

Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., mentioned fears the CIA would “just be gobbled up by the Defense Department” if Hayden were to take over.

Stock up on popcorn:

The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee [that would be Arlen Specter] said he would view a Hayden nomination as a way to get information from the Bush administration about its secretive domestic surveillance program, undertaken by the NSA when Hayden led that agency.

Brian Knowlton of the NY Times/International Herald Tribune quotes Nancy Pelosi:

“There’s a power struggle going on between the Department of Defense and the entire rest of the intelligence community,” she said, “so I don’t see how you have a four-star general heading up the C.I.A.” She said that she had “serious concerns” about General Hayden, at least in this position.

One Republican senator, Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, said he believed that even were General Hayden to resign his military commission, serious conflicts would remain.

“I think the fact that he is part of the military today would be the major problem,” Mr. Chambliss said on ABC-TV. “Now, just resigning commission and moving on, putting on a striped suit, a pinstriped suit versus an air force uniform, I don’t think makes much difference.”

The last military man to head the Central Intelligence Agency was Adm. Stansfield Turner, during the presidency of Jimmy Carter.

Christy Harden Smith reports at firedoglake that “George Stephanopolous just announced on ABC’s This Week that Gen. Michael Hayden will definitely be named President Bush’s nominee to succeed Porter Goss as the DCI for the CIA.”

The hearings could be more entertaining than “Mission Impossible III.”