If CIA Director Michael Hayden wants to get rid of meddlesome Inspector General John Helgerson, he can’t do it directly, since Helgerson is a presidential appointee. That’s a first for Hayden: as POGO’s Nick Schwellenbach and Beverly Lumpkin observe, when he was head of NSA from 1999 to 2005, the agency IG was under the general’s thumb. But that’s not to say that Hayden doesn’t have options. The New York Times explains:
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=179629