More in the cross-post on the MRC's NewsBusters blog.
Appearing on Wednesday's NBC Today, former CIA Director Michael Hayden went after the network for hyping the so-called "torture report" released by Senate Democrats on Tuesday. After Hayden denounced the partisan report as something that "reads like a prosecutorial screed rather than an historical document," co-host Savannah Guthrie pressed him on what he disagreed with. Hayden replied: "Well, I disagree with the fact that you're claiming it to be news. These topics and subjects were all out there."
At the top of the show, fellow co-host Matt Lauer teased the upcoming interview with Hayden: "Cruelty and lies? Outrage over the new report calling out the Bush administration for using brutal and, in one case, deadly techniques on terror suspects post-9/11. This morning a former CIA chief who headed up the program for more than two years, Michael Hayden, joins us live. Did he lie to Congress about what was happening, as the report claims?"