Stephen F. Hayes

Stephen F. Hayes is a columnist for "The Weekly Standard", a prominent American Neoconservative magazine. Hayes has been selected as the official biographer for Vice President Richard Cheney. ["U.S. News & World Report": [http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/whispers/articles/060827/4whisplead_2.htm "Washington Whispers."] August 28, 2006.]

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", "Washington Times", Salon.com, "National Review", and "Reason". He has been a commentator on CNN, "The McLaughlin Group", 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. He is a member of the Sigma Chi fraternity.

Writings and political views

Hayes is well known for his writings postulating an operational relationship between Saddam Hussein's Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist organization. (See Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda link allegations). He ended one of his articles by this sentence: "...there can no longer be any serious argument about whether Saddam Hussein's Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to plot against Americans." ["Weekly Standard": [http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/378fmxyz.asp "Case Closed."] ]

Hayes authored 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 leaked memo from Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith to the U.S. Congress on 27 October 2003. ["Weekly Standard": [http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=3378&R=EE501FBEA "Preview: Case Closed."] ]

The DOD issued a statement about the Feith Memo on Nov 15, 2003, which included the following [U.S. Department of Defense: [http://www.defenselink.mil/releases/2003/nr20031115-0642.html "DoD Statement on News Reports of Al Qaeda and Iraq Connections."] ]

:News reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al Qaeda and Iraq in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee are inaccurate.:.:.:The items listed in the classified annex were either raw reports or products of the CIA, the National Security Agency or, in one case, the Defense Intelligence Agency. The provision of the classified annex to the Intelligence Committee was cleared by other agencies and done with the permission of the intelligence community. The selection of the documents was made by DoD to respond to the committee’s question. The classified annex was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it drew no conclusions.

Hayes published a commentary on the Defense Department's response. ["Weekly Standard": [http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=3396&R=EE501EB6A "A close examination of the Defense Department's latest statement."] ]

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. ["National Review": [http://www.nationalreview.com/interrogatory/hayes200406020847.asp "The Terror Ties That Bind Us to War."] ]

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.'" ["Washington Post": [http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A54452-2003Nov17 "CIA Seeks Probe of Iraq-Al Qaeda Memo Leak."] ]

What Hayes called "perhaps the government's strongest indication that Saddam and al Qaeda may have worked together on September 11," ["Weekly Standard": [http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/152lndzv.asp?pg=2 "The Connection."] ] for example, has been described by some other analysts as a mere confusion over names that sounded alike. ["Washington Post": [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58899-2004Jun21.html "Al Qaeda Link To Iraq May Be Confusion Over Names."] ]

Robert S. Leiken, a Director at the Nixon Center and Senior Fellow at The Brookings Institute cited the 9/11 Commission Report’s conclusion that they found “"no evidence [of] a collaborative operational relationship".” [between Al Qaeda and the Iraqi regime] and the Senate Intelligence Committee Report’s finding that the CIA’s conclusion [same] was “"reasonable and objective".” in an article he published for In The National Interest. ["Leinken, In The National Interest": [http://www.inthenationalinterest.com/Articles/November2004/November2004Leiken.html "Leinken Article"] ]

He further stated at the Symposium: The Saddam-Osama Connection sponsored by Front Page Magazine

:“These conclusions echoed the judgment of virtually every outside expert and government authority.”, then provided similar quotes from Jack Straw, British Foreign Secretary, Kenneth Pollack, the former NSC and CIA point man on Iraq, as well as French and Spanish Magistrates heading investigations into Al-Qaeda. ["Leiken, Front Page Magazine": [http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/Read.aspx?GUID=30B099F2-0C06-4BC0-AD25-6258BD40E184 "Symposium Minutes"] ]

Hayes also has a playful side, and has incorporated references to "double dongs" into his writing at the Weekly Standard. It is not clear whether editors William Kristol or Fred Barnes approved of the dongs reference, but the reference resulted in Hayes acquiring the moniker "Double Dongs Hayes."

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi

In his book "The Connection", Hayes wrote: "After evacuating an al-Qaeda training camp he ran in Afghanistan as U.S. troops approached, Ansar al-Islam founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi eventually had his leg amputated and replaced with a prosthesis around late May 2002. He was treated in Baghdad's Olympic Hospital, an elite facility whose director was the late Uday Hussein, son of the deposed tyrant." Hayes repeated these claims multiple times in print and in live appearances. Al-Zarqawi was not the founder of Ansar al-Islam. Moreover, an autopsy of al-Zarqawi's body after he was killed by coalition forces showed two fully-intact healthy limbs, although x-rays revealed that one had suffered a fracture, but healed. [Media Matters for America: [http://mediamatters.org/items/200609130012 "For purported facts on Zarqawi, O'Reilly trusts Stephen Hayes, who 'stands behind his reporting,' though the Senate Intelligence Committee disputes that 'reporting.'"] ]

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. Simpson attorney Alan Dershowitz, and "Vagina Monologues" playwright Eve Ensler." ["Weekly Standard": [http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/000/921ojibz.asp "PBS's Televangelist."] ] 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.""Weekly Standard": [http://www.weeklystandard.com/content/public/articles/000/000/000/935cqxuk.asp "Bill Moyers Responds."] ]

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."

Published work

Bibliography

*cite book | last=Hayes | first=Stephen | title=The Brain: Paul Wolfowitz and the Making of the Bush Doctrine | location=New York | publisher=HarperCollins | year=2005 | isbn=0060723467
*cite book | last=Hayes | first=Stephen | title=The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein has Endangered America | location=New York | publisher=HarperCollins | year=2004 | isbn=0060746734
*cite book | last=Hayes | first=Stephen | title=Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President | location=New York | publisher=HarperCollins | year=2007 | isbn=0060723467

References

External links

* [http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/804yqqnr.asp "The Mother of All Connections"] by Stephen F Hayes "The Weekly Standard" July 18 2005
* [http://thinkprogress.org/2006/08/28/cheney-biographer/ Cheney Chooses Chief Propagator of False Iraq-9/11 Link To Be Official Biographer] Think Progress
* [http://thinkprogress.org/2006/03/18/hayes-strikes-out/ Stephen Hayes Strikes Out (Again)] Think Progress
* [http://mediamatters.org/issues_topics/people/stephenfhayes 16 articles on Stephen F. Hayes] from Media Matters for America