WASHINGTON — The Senate Intelligence Committee voted Tuesday to approve Gen. Michael V. Hayden as director of the CIA, endorsing a veteran intelligence officer who has pledged to push the troubled agency to take more risks and work more closely with other U.S. spy services.
Hayden now faces a confirmation vote before the full Senate, perhaps as soon as this week. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the intelligence panel, called Hayden "a proven leader and an extremely qualified intelligence professional."
The committee also passed an intelligence spending bill that would require the Bush administration to report to Congress on the treatment of detainees at clandestine CIA prisons overseas. Republican opposition derailed similar proposals on the Senate floor last year.
The panel's 12-3 vote to confirm Hayden was lopsided, but the dissent reflected lingering concern over his role in a domestic wiretapping program that has been a source of controversy for the Bush administration.
Just last year, Hayden received a unanimous endorsement from the committee -- as well as the Senate -- to become the deputy director for national intelligence, No. 2 to the nation's top spy official, John D. Negroponte.
But Hayden's standing among some lawmakers has eroded in recent months amid disclosures of domestic spy operations mounted by the National Security Agency, which Hayden led from 1999 to 2005.
During his confirmation hearing last week, Hayden acknowledged that he was a leading architect of a surveillance program launched shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in which the NSA intercepted international phone calls and e-mails of U.S. residents without obtaining court approval.
Some lawmakers have called the program illegal and complained that it was kept secret from all but a handful of members of Congress for four years before it was exposed in news reports last year.
More recently, Hayden has had to fend off questions about whether the NSA also assembled phone records on tens of millions of Americans in an effort to identify suspicious calling patterns.
The three votes against Hayden were cast by Democratic Sens. Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin, Evan Bayh of Indiana and Ron Wyden of Oregon. All three had expressed concerns about Hayden's role in the NSA domestic surveillance operations during the confirmation hearing.
Even some of those who voted for Hayden expressed misgivings.
