WASHINGTON — Outgoing CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said Thursday that the most pressing issues facing his successor include Iran's nuclear ambitions and surging violence in Mexico -- but not the war in Iraq.
Hayden also defended the agency's use of harsh interrogation methods and said he had advised the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama against going too far in dismantling the agency's controversial counter-terrorism programs.
"These techniques worked," Hayden said of the agency's interrogation program during a farewell session with reporters who cover the CIA.
"One needs to be very careful" about eliminating CIA authorities, he said, because "if you create barriers to doing things . . . there's no wink, no nod, no secret handshake. We won't do it."
Hayden's spirited defense of the agency came on the same day that Eric H. Holder Jr., Obama's nominee to serve as the next attorney general, testified on Capitol Hill that waterboarding, an interrogation method used by the CIA, amounted to torture.
Hayden is widely credited with restoring stability and morale during more than two years as CIA director. But his ardent defense of the agency's activities may help explain why he was not asked by Obama to stay in the job.
Hayden is also tied to other Bush administration controversies. As the head of the National Security Agency after the Sept. 11 attacks, he was an architect of the warrantless wiretapping operation.
Hayden won a measure of vindication with the release of a court ruling Thursday that supported the administration's right to compel U.S. telecommunications companies to cooperate with the eavesdropping effort.
"My reaction?" Hayden said Thursday, referring to the ruling. "Duh."
Obama's nominee to serve as the next CIA director, former California lawmaker Leon E. Panetta, is expected to rein in an array of agency activities, including its use of so-called enhanced interrogation techniques.
Hayden noted that the agency had stopped the use of waterboarding more than five years ago, but he argued that the CIA should not be bound by the same restrictive interrogation rules as the U.S. Army.
Responding to critics who contend that harsh interrogation methods produce faulty intelligence, Hayden said that interrogations of key Al Qaeda figures accounted for the bulk of the United States' understanding of the terrorist network and led to a series of successful operations around the globe.
