The question is whether the current president should have nominated the particular military officer he has chosen for that key post. And that's a question that won't be answered unless the Senate finds its constitutional voice and conducts a thorough review, not only of President Bush's nomination of Gen. Michael Hayden but also of the ongoing restructuring of the nation's intelligence apparatus.

The pre-inked rubber stamp of approval that Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch keeps at the ready for every national security move the White House proposes will not be of any use in this matter.

Hayden has a resume that is impressive enough. The question is whether he is the right person to head an agency that seems to have rapidly moved from directionless - missing the threat of al-Qaida using airliners as weapons and imagining weapons of mass destruction in Iraq - to misdirected - secretly kidnapping terror suspects around the world and shipping them to secret prisons hither and yon.

The fact that Hayden was running the National Security Agency when it began its illegal warrantless wiretap program, and that he was both eager to defend that operation and able to provide empty briefings on it to members of Congress, is a serious blot on his record and requires a thorough going over by the Senate.

Yet members of both parties, including Democrats who rightly questioned the wiretaps, have warmed to Hayden. The reassuring spin emanating from Washington is that Hayden, free of the Pentagon and under the protection of National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, could turn the CIA into an agency that provides its civilian masters with real, unvarnished information of a kind that's been sorely lacking for a long time.

He can demonstrate that strength by answering the Senate's questions - in secret, where necessary - about not only the operational approach his CIA would take, but also his understanding of how America's intelligence services will do right by America's ideals.