WASHINGTON — CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said Friday that the agency's ability to pursue Al Qaeda and other terrorist networks was being hampered by declining political and public support for aggressive methods that the CIA had used in interrogations and other counter- terrorism operations.
In a rare public speech by a CIA chief, Hayden lashed out at the media and complained that the political climate was slipping toward apathy and risk aversion characteristic of the period leading up to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"When I get in the car at Langley and drive down the George Washington Parkway," Hayden said, referring to the corridor between the CIA's headquarters in Virginia and downtown Washington, "it's not long before it begins to feel like Sept. 10.
"I'm not talking about the threat," Hayden said, but rather "the willingness of the broader political culture to be comfortable with the things we believe are both lawful and necessary to fight this war."
Hayden's speech, timed to the upcoming anniversary of the terrorist strikes, is part of an offensive by intelligence officials to protect the expanded resources and authorities they were given nearly six years ago. Director of National Intelligence J. Michael McConnell sounded similar warnings last month in an effort to get Congress to give the government expanded electronic surveillance powers.
Hayden's speech also was designed to defend an agency that has been a focus of criticism since Sept. 11, and has seen its place in the intelligence community significantly eroded.
Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, Hayden provided new details to counter what he characterized as damaging misconceptions about the agency's interrogation and "rendition" operations.
In particular, he disclosed that the CIA had transferred fewer than 100 prisoners to other countries. Critics have contended that the rendition program has led to detainees being tortured in such nations as Egypt and Uzbekistan.
Hayden also lashed out at a European Parliament investigation that was harshly critical of CIA operations. He called the contents of its report "wild speculation."
The report concluded that the CIA had engaged in more than 1,245 flights, suggesting they were rendition flights shuttling terrorism suspects to other countries, he said, but the actual number of rendition flights "is a tiny fraction of that."
