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Tavis: Admiral Stansfield Turner served as director of the CIA under President Jimmy Carter. Prior to that he was Commander-In-Chief of NATO's southern flank, based in Italy. The former Navy Academy graduate and Rhodes Scholar now teaches at the University of Maryland's Graduate School of Public Policy. He joins us tonight, though, from Fort Myers, Florida. Admiral Turner, nice to have you on the program, sir.

Adm. Stansfield Turner: Thank you.

Tavis: Why should we be concerned about General Hayden?

Turner: Well, General Hayden is eminently qualified to do the job. The one reservation that I have is that he apparently, in his previous incarnations, authorized the wiretapping of American telephones without warrants. I believe that's against something known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was passed way back in 1978, when I was in office.

And that it is illegal to do what he has been doing. I'm not a legal expert, however, and there are certainly people who are claiming that it is within the province of the President to do this kind of unauthorized-by-courts wiretapping. That, I think, is the issue that has to be resolved with respect to General Hayden's nomination.

Tavis: Let me ask you how you juxtapose these two points, because you lost me a moment ago when you suggested that on the one hand, he's eminently qualified, but on the other hand, it is your belief and belief of others that he has perhaps engaged in activity that is perhaps illegal. Don't those two things cancel each other out?

Turner: Well, what I'm really saying, and I'm sorry if I confused the situation, is that by background, by training, by his experience, he certainly is well qualified to be the Director of Central Intelligence, or the director of the CIA for our country. But, you have to worry about whether he has broken the law in his previous activities. And, if so, he's not qualified.

Tavis: Let me ask you how you feel about what seems to concern so many other persons in Washington, namely members of Congress, who are concerned that it is a bad move, a mistake, in fact, to put another military officer in charge of another agency at this particular time, particularly a civilian spy agency. What's your sense of a military officer heading a civilian spy agency like CIA?

Turner: The law of our country specifically provides that the head of the CIA may be a military officer on active duty, a retired military officer, or a civilian. There is no reason to object to General Hayden being in this position just because he's a military officer. The intelligence of our country provides for having military officers in charge from time to time, and he's a perfectly well-qualified person to do that, with this one reservation about the law with regard to tapping telephones.

Tavis: Would it concern you, or let me put it another way. Do you think it should concern the American people that were he to be approved for this post at CIA, we'd have a military officer running CIA, a military officer running NSA, National Security Agency, and another military officer running the Defense Intelligence Agency. So basically, pretty much across the board, we got all military guys running our intelligence apparatus. Should that concern us?

Turner: No, I don't think it's a matter of deep concern because there is overall civilian control. The head of all intelligence is now Ambassador Negroponte, and he's got to keep all those things going together.

Tavis: What's your sense of why - and everybody is speculating, of course, here, but what's your sense of why Porter Goss left the building?

Turner: Well, Porter Goss was number one in the intelligence world one day, and the next day, he found he was number two. And apparently, he didn't want to play under those conditions.

Tavis: Take me back to when you became the head of CIA under Jimmy Carter. You were, at the time - at the time of your selection, at least, still on active duty, were you not?

Turner: I was, and I stayed on active duty for the first two years I was in office. I then retired and served my last two years as Director of Intelligence as a retired admiral.

Tavis: Did it make a difference, your leadership, that is, did it make a difference, your leadership, or the environments you were operating in, being on active duty in those first two years or not? Or being retired, rather, in the latter part of your service?

Turner: Not one whit of difference. I didn't do anything differently in the one case or the other.

Tavis: Let me ask you what you think is most wrong at this particular point with not just the CIA, but with our intelligence apparatus across the board.

Turner: I don't think there's adequate coordination of all the intelligence activities of our country. And that's what the new Director of National Intelligence, Ambassador Negroponte, is supposed to do. And he's not been there all that long, so we have to hope he's going to take charge and make sure that all of the intelligence that comes in from different agencies under different departments is brought together in one place and adequately analyzed.

Tavis: Let me ask you whether or not you think, Admiral, that's even possible. Is it possible, when you have that many agencies collecting information? It sounds nice and may even look good on paper. Is it possible to coordinate all of those efforts?

Turner: Well, it's a very tough job. (Laughs) I tried it, didn't fully succeed. But I think with the change in the law and the creation of a new position called Director of National Intelligence, which, Ambassador Negroponte has today, and which he has as his only job, I have hope that it can be done now. That the job is manageable because it's been narrowed from being head of the overall intelligence operation and head of the CIA to just being head of the overall operation.

Tavis: Let me offer this as an exit question. You've been around and in Washington long enough to have seen all kinds of stories start to build when a particular person is nominated for a particular activity in Washington. Right now, as I mentioned at the top of this conversation, at the top of this show, members of both parties are giving the President a hard time for this particular selection.

A poll out today suggests, unconnected to this, that President Bush's pull numbers are down. Popularity numbers are down, favorable numbers, down to 31 percent as we speak. What's your sense of what might or what will happen here in the coming days with this nomination?

Turner: I think the Senate will interrogate the Ambassador very carefully, but I do think that there is no real impediment to his holding the job and doing it well and therefore, he will succeed in being confirmed.

Tavis: Let me ask you, I think I know the answer to this, but I don't want to judge it. Let me ask you, before I let you go, if, in fact, you think that at the end of this line he ends up being questioned, being interrogated with some aggression, but ends up being confirmed in the end anyway, take me back to the beginning of this conversation and tell me why you think it's important then to speak out in the way that you are?

Turner: I think that it's important for the country to understand what kind of a person they have as their Director of Intelligence. And therefore, all of this public scrutiny that you and I are going through here and others are going through in the press and so on is healthy in the long run. And when this process is finished, the public will understand who this man is much better than they do today.

And that's very, very good, particularly when it's an activity that is as secret as this. The public needs to have as much insight into it as they can. They can't know all the real secrets of intelligence, but they can understand what kind of people are running it.

Tavis: He's the former CIA director under President Jimmy Carter. He is Admiral Stansfield Turner. Admiral, nice to have you on the program, thanks for your insight, I appreciate it.

Turner: Thank you, Tavis.

Tavis: Up next, actor and comedian Denis Leary. Stay with us.