The Editors at National Review Online post an editorial on General Hayden’s Confirmation Hearings for head of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The say he needs to be confirmed, which needs to happen.

NRO points to three major problems with the CIA:

First, the CIA’s analytical track record is poor.

Think Iran in the 70’s, Iraq in the 80’s and the lead-up to the Gulf War, post Gulf War, collapse of the USSR, North Korean Nukes, WMD in Iraq, perhaps Iran Nukes now.

Second, the agency is inept at its core mission of waging covert operations against America’s enemies.

Church Committee hearings, other post-Watergate and post-Vietnam witch-hunts, other misdirected oversight severely degraded CIA capabilities.

Third, while much of the permanent bureaucracy in Washington tends to lean to the left and resent policy innovations by conservative Republican administrations, this problem is particularly acute at the CIA. Indeed, much of the agency has been in a state of semi-open rebellion against the Bush administration. Numerous CIA officials engaged in efforts to torpedo key administration policies by leaking information to the media.

Porter Goss fought this CIA—and the CIA won.

NRO suggests that Hayden can play a critical role in resuming the battle to reform (fix) the CIA:

The message must be that, although Goss is gone, the clean-up at the CIA is not—and that Hayden is going there to finish it.

If we let the bureau-boobs, partisan and other political turf opportunists win this time around, we will only have ourselves to blame the next time catastrophe occurs to American National Security. And by then, those same apparatchiks will be safely retired, out on the links or off on some cruise. That is, when they’re not penning anonymous Op-Eds or leaking classified information to the press.