Stephen F. Hayes

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Stephen F. Hayes is a columnist for The Weekly Standard, a prominent American right-wing magazine. Hayes has been selected as the official biographer for Vice President Richard Cheney.[1]

Before joining The Weekly Standard, Hayes was a senior writer for National Journal's Hotline. He also served for six years as Director of the Institute on Political Journalism at Georgetown University. His work has appeared in the New York Post, the Washington Times, Salon, National Review, and Reason. He has been a commentator on CNN, "The McLaughlin Group," the Fox News Channel, MSNBC, CNBC, and C-SPAN.

A graduate of Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and DePauw University, Hayes was born and raised in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.

1 Iraq/al-Qaeda argument
2 Bill Moyers dispute
3 Books
4 External links

[edit] Iraq/al-Qaeda argument

Hayes is best known for his series of articles describing alleged links between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist organization. (See Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda). He has written a book on this subject entitled: The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein has Endangered America [ISBN 0-06-074673-4].

A major source for the articles and book was a memo from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to the U.S. Congress on 27 October 2003.[2] The so-called Feith Memo was based on leaked intelligence, which the Defense Department subsequently rejected as "inaccurate," noting that the information leaked "was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it drew no conclusions."[3] Hayes published a commentary on the Defense Department's response.[4]

They also said:

"Individuals who leak or purport to leak classified information are doing serious harm to national security; such activity is deplorable and may be illegal."

Hayes gave this verdict on the Feith Memo:

CIA Director George Tenet was asked about the Feith Memo at a Senate hearing in March and distanced his agency from the Pentagon analysis. He submitted another version of the document to the committee with some "corrections" to the Pentagon submission. My understanding is that there were but a few such adjustments and that they were relatively minor (although my book challenges two of the most interesting reports in the memo). Some of the stuff — telephone intercepts, foreign-government reporting, detainee debriefings, etc. — is pretty straightforward and most of the report tracks with what Tenet has said publicly; it just provides more detail. That said, there were two items that seemed to require more explanation and, when weighed against available evidence, seem questionable.[5]

The arguments raised by Hayes about the Saddam/al-Qaeda relationship have been debated; they have been rejected by most counterterrorism experts and intelligence analysts, as well as by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. What Hayes called "perhaps the government's strongest indication that Saddam and al Qaeda may have worked together on September 11"[6], for example, has been described by some other analysts as a mere confusion over names that sounded alike.[7]

Former head of the Middle East section of the DIA W. Patrick Lang told the Washington Post that the Weekly Standard article which published Feith's memo "is a listing of a mass of unconfirmed reports, many of which themselves indicate that the two groups continued to try to establish some sort of relationship. If they had such a productive relationship, why did they have to keep trying?" And, according to the Post, "another former senior intelligence official said the memo is not an intelligence product but rather 'data points ... among the millions of holdings of the intelligence agencies, many of which are simply not thought likely to be true.'"[8]

[edit] Bill Moyers dispute

Hayes also gained some attention with a piece attacking former PBS host Bill Moyers whom he claims interviewed "Cornel West, O.J. attorney Alan Dershowitz, and 'Vagina Monologues' playwright Eve Ensler."[9] Bill Moyers replied in a letter to the editor, "He gets it right only once. I have never met or interviewed Alan Dershowitz or Eve Ensler." Moyers summarized the piece famously as "replete with willful misrepresentation, deceitful juxtaposition, and outright error, with a little hypocrisy thrown in for flavor."[10] Stephen F. Hayes replied:

When I interviewed him, Moyers didn't deny, as he does now, that I was able to substantiate my source's gibe. Instead, he sought to draw a distinction between what he says on the air and the politically partisan red meat he serves up on the lecture circuit. In fact, when I asked him about the LBJ speech, he said "That's fair game, you've got it on the record there." Then he compared himself to conservative eminence and longtime "Firing Line" host William F. Buckley. "Bill Buckley used to make speeches all the time to Republicans and conservative audiences, even while he was conducting the longest-running show in PBS history. But did you find those things he said in his speeches in his show? Not necessarily." So much for what I "didn't" and "couldn't" substantiate.

[edit] Books

Stephen F Hayes and D.A.H. Hirshey. 2005. The Brain: Paul Wolfowitz and the Making of the Bush Doctrine, HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-072346-7.
Stephen F Hayes. The Connection : How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America, HarperCollins. ISBN 0-06-074673-4