scowcroft, graham heart hayden

This will interest some of you... (john re graham, and the rest of you re scowcroft) (thnx Noise)

"Former Senator Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat who headed the Intelligence Committee until 2003, recalls coming away dazzled from tours in which General Hayden showed off satellite dishes and supercomputers at N.S.A. headquarters at Fort Meade, Md.

"He builds up your sense of confidence in him as both a visionary leader and one with his mind wrapped around the details," Mr. Graham said.

Brent Scowcroft, under whom General Hayden served from 1989 to 1991 on the National Security Council staff of the first President Bush, also piles on the superlatives.

"He's exceedingly smart, he's very hardworking, he has great integrity, and he knows the intelligence business," said Mr. Scowcroft, himself a retired Air Force lieutenant general who, as chairman of the current president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board until 2005, closely followed General Hayden's work at the N.S.A. "That's a combination that's really needed right now at C.I.A."

But Mr. Scowcroft, an experienced judge of Washington insiders, added, "It's easy to snow people on a subject few people know much about.""

I hadnt realised that Scowcroft was ex-FIAB. Incidentally, it was the FIAB that threw Goss under the bus. (and incidentally graham is a Goss flunky from wayback)