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After all, they must be wondering how we can be leaders of the free world -- a nation others look up to -- if we don't torture people we don't like?

Via Raw Story: The Blotter: CIA Bans Water-Boarding in Terror Interrogations:

The officials say the decision was made sometime last year but has never been publicly disclosed.

One U.S. intelligence official said, "It would be wrong to assume that the program of the past moved into the future unchanged."

A CIA spokesman said, as a matter of policy, he would decline to comment on interrogation techniques, "which have been and continue to be lawful," he said.

Jason Vest, in a post on the CIA's Existential Crisis:

Thus, what Congress effectively engineered is a situation in which the Pentagon has had great latitude to expand its intelligence portfolio--which it has, arguably becoming the dominant pole in the intelligence community. The only way the ODNI can hope to have anything resembling actual intelligence czar authority is by first establishing itself as the other pole--civilian intelligence--opposite the Pentagon.

ODNI is on the verge of achieving that critical step. The only real question now is whether or not Hayden (provided he gets confirmed) will be cast as either the new, tight linchpin between CIA and ODNI--or as the figure tasked with the Agency's total dismemberment (hints here). Since last year some in the intelligence community have been regarding the latter as an eventual certainty. "I think that the Agency is eventually going to be broken up," one of our sources told us, summing up a common sentiment. "DI goes to ODNI. The National Clandestine Service, backed up by support and technical elements, goes too, and ends up reporting directly to the Deputy DNI for Collection. Whatever's left gets scattered to the wind, and CIA Headquarters becomes a GSA [General Services Administration] leased building or something."

Via E&P:

QUESTION: Jonathan Landay with Knight Ridder. I'd like to stay on the same issue, and that had to do with the standard by which you use to target your wiretaps. I'm no lawyer, but my understanding is that the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution specifies that you must have probable cause to be able to do a search that does not violate an American's right against unlawful searches and seizures. Do you use --
 
GEN. HAYDEN: No, actually -- the Fourth Amendment actually protects all of us against unreasonable search and seizure.
 
QUESTION: But the --
 
GEN. HAYDEN: That's what it says.
 
QUESTION: But the measure is probable cause, I believe.
 
GEN. HAYDEN: The amendment says unreasonable search and seizure.
 
QUESTION: But does it not say probable --
 
GEN. HAYDEN: No. The amendment says --
 
QUESTION: The court standard, the legal standard --
 
GEN. HAYDEN: -- unreasonable search and seizure.
 
QUESTION: The legal standard is probable cause, General. You used the terms just a few minutes ago, "We reasonably believe." And a FISA court, my understanding is, would not give you a warrant if you went before them and say "we reasonably believe"; you have to go to the FISA court, or the attorney general has to go to the FISA court and say, "we have probable cause."
 
And so what many people believe -- and I'd like you to respond to this -- is that what you've actually done is crafted a detour around the FISA court by creating a new standard of "reasonably believe" in place of probable cause because the FISA court will not give you a warrant based on reasonable belief, you have to show probable cause. Could you respond to that, please?
 
GEN. HAYDEN: Sure. I didn't craft the authorization. I am responding to a lawful order. All right? The attorney general has averred to the lawfulness of the order.
 
Just to be very clear -- and believe me, if there's any amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it's the Fourth. And it is a reasonableness standard in the Fourth Amendment. And so what you've raised to me -- and I'm not a lawyer, and don't want to become one -- what you've raised to me is, in terms of quoting the Fourth Amendment, is an issue of the Constitution. The constitutional standard is "reasonable." And we believe -- I am convinced that we are lawful because what it is we're doing is reasonable.