My friend Ken Silverstein over at Harper’s talks to an anonymous former CIA official who takes the prospect of Hayden staying seriously. The dude also thinks it’s a terrible idea:

[Hayden's] a safe place holder. But it won’t play well in [the CIA]. He hasn’t earned respect. He’s a four-star airforce general who’s not a pilot or a war guy. He is a really nice guy, he just has no business running the nation’s espionage business. He’s a professional administrator and they need a good case officer. They need a spy to rebuild, restructure, motivate and run the nations spy service. Bush is leaving office, after two terms with the same intelligence questions unanswered that he faced when he arrived? How is this possible?

I know, right? It’s almost like Bush wasn’t interested in intelligence-qua-intelligence, as opposed to intelligence that provided opportunities for cherished visions of the future. Still, it’s interesting to see Hayden pushback that centers on agency antipathy to what he represents, since all the pro-Hayden stuff that’s been floated in the press has portrayed him as commanding fervent loyalty over at Langley.

We would like to let you personally know that we have decided that this past election will signify my last term in the House of Representatives. In 2010 it will be time for us to move on to new challenges.

Hoekstra says he’s eying a run to become Michigan’s governor.

First elected in 1992, the former Fortune-500 executive ran on a reform platform, but hasn’t always kept to the script. He went back on his vow to stay in Washington only 12 years, for example, and veered from another promise not to accept money from political action committees, or PACs.

In 2004, Hoekstra was named head of the House intelligence committee, where he rankled Democrats with a disputed 2006 report that the U.S. military had discovered hundreds of WMDs in Iraq. Another 2006 report coming out of the Hoekstra-led intelligence committee found that Iran was well on its way to procucing a nuclear weapon — an assertion blasted by the United Nations as “erroneous” and “misleading.”

Even Hoekstra seems to acknowledge the prickly nature of his tenure. “While I know that on any given day there would be differences on policy, I tried to insure that disagreements would not become disagreeable,” his statement reads. “Civility and respect are cornerstones of our democracy. That has always been my goal and my vision. I recognize that on some days I came up short. I apologize for that.”