Alexander nominated to head NSA

Army Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander is President Bush’s nominee to head the National Security Agency.

Alexander is serving as the Army’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence/G-2, the service’s top intelligence official. He is known for his candor, suggesting last year at the Network Centric Operations 2004 conference in Atlantic City, N.J., that the United States may not be winning the global war on terrorism.

Alexander became the Army’s top intelligence official in 2003 after serving as commanding general of the service’s Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM). He graduated from West Point and holds three master’s degrees in physics, business administration and systems technology.

If confirmed as NSA’s director and chief of its Central Security Service, Alexander will oversee the ultra-secretive intelligence agency whose traditional mission has been making and breaking codes and eavesdropping on foreign governments’ communications. In addition, he will direct NSA's growing activities involving computer network defense and attack under the U.S. Strategic Command.

He would replace Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, who now serves as the new deputy director of national intelligence.

Army Maj. Gen. John Kimmons, commanding general of INSCOM, is Bush’s nominee to replace Alexander.

Army Maj. Gen. John DeFreitas, deputy chief of staff for intelligence/C-2 for the Multi-National Force-Iraq in Operation Enduring Freedom, is Army Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Schoomaker’s selection to replace Kimmons.