[Infowarrior] - NSA, CYBERCOM Leadership Should Be Split, Hayden Says

[Richard Forno]

AOL Defense (defense.aol.com)
September 7, 2011

NSA, CYBERCOM Leadership Should Be Split, Hayden Says

By Carlo Munoz

Washington: Gen. Keith Alexander should give up his role as head of the
National Security Agency to focus more on his job as chief of Cyber Command,
former CIA director Mike Hayden said today.

Alexander was already the top military officer at NSA when he was nominated
to receive his fourth star and head up Cyber Command last year. Despite the
fact that the NSA chief has always been a three-star general, DoD and the
White House opted to give Alexander both jobs.

Alexander's nomination was confirmed by the Senate last May.

In July, DoD released its long-awaited cyberwarfare strategy which provides
the blueprint for how the Pentagon will defend against potential national
security threats in cyberspace.

But as the role of cyber in military and intelligence operations grows, the
head of Cyber Command will likely have to give up the NSA job to focus on
that mission, Hayden said during a intelligence and national security
symposium sponsored by the Center For Strategic and International Studies
today.

Hayden, who held the top job at CIA from 2006 to 2009, added that splitting
up command of both organizations would also ensure that NSA does not become
too focused on cyber operations and lose sight of its main mission of
signals and imagery analysis.

Breaking up command of NSA and Cyber Command would also make both
organizations more responsive, since each caters to different areas of the
military and intelligence communities, Hayden added.

NSA, according to Hayden, is primarily responsible for providing
intelligence and analysis for DoD's combatant commands. It is, by and large,
an intelligence "force provider" for the military, he said.

On the other hand, Cyber Command will be the preeminent cyberwarfare arm for
the entire Defense Department, similar to Special Operations Command.

Putting such a wide range of responsibilities under one commander simply
does not make sense and will likely not continue, Hayden argued.

That said, the respective heads of both organizations must maintain close
ties with each other, as well as with other agencies in the intelligence
community and the office of the director for national intelligence, he added.