Chairman Chaffetz was an enthusiastic supporter of the ‘USA Freedom Act,’ designed to rein in the allegedly renegade NSA and its wanton depredations of American privacy. – Michael Hayden
The Constitution defends all of us against unreasonable search and seizure. What constitutes reasonableness depends upon threat. – Michael Hayden
‘Islamist terrorism.’ The very phrase is contentious. No one wants to make this problem harder by unfairly branding and alienating a quarter of the world’s population, and even in this construction, no one should be thinking this means all of Islam or all Muslims. – Michael Hayden
My time in war zones have been fleeting and infrequent. I’ve been to Iraq. I’ve been to Afghanistan. I’ve been to other places where I’ve collected hazardous duty pay. – Michael Hayden
I think the Sino-American relationship is the most important geo-strategic question facing us. – Michael Hayden
My literal responsibility as director of the CIA with regard to covert action was to inform the Congress – not to seek their approval; to inform. – Michael Hayden
I must admit, my old tribe is not unanimous on the view I’ve taken, but there are other folks like me, other former directors of the NSA who have said building in backdoors universally in Apple or other devices actually is bad for America. I think we can all agree it’s bad for American privacy. – Michael Hayden
The use of these techniques against these terrorists made us safer. It really did work. – Michael Hayden
Most of the 9/11 hijackers weren’t married, none of them had families inside the United States, and there’s no evidence that any family members moved before, during, or after 9/11. – Michael Hayden
Access to the security clearance database would disgorge even more detailed personal information, including the foreign contacts of American officials. – Michael Hayden
What Edward Snowden did amounted to the greatest hemorrhaging of legitimate American secrets in the history of my nation. – Michael Hayden
I believe we do have a great intelligence service. Is it good enough in all circumstances? Of course not. We live in the human condition. We try to make it better each day. – Michael Hayden
I have spent my adult life working in American intelligence. It has been quite an honor. Generally well resourced. A global mission. No want of issues. And it was a hell of a ride. – Michael Hayden
I’m not hugging the Guantanamo location, but our right to hold people under the laws of war as enemy combatants, I think, is unarguable, and we need to stand up for that. – Michael Hayden
Presidents get to decide how their intelligence is served up to them, and it’s the job of intelligence to adjust. – Michael Hayden
If Snowden really claims that his actions amounted to genuine civil disobedience, he should go to some English language bookstore in Moscow and get a copy of Henry David Thoreau’s ‘Civil Disobedience’. – Michael Hayden
Right after 9/11, I mean, every agency can give their own gradation, but a nice, popular rule of thumb is everybody doubled down. I ended up in the NSA with about twice as much money as I had prior to 9/11. – Michael Hayden
The CIA held about a hundred detainees from 2002 to 2008; about a third of them underwent interrogations that have been variously described as enhanced, tough or torture. The toughest technique was water boarding, used on three detainees, the last in early 2003. – Michael Hayden
If we don’t get our relationship with the emerging People’s Republic of China right, that is something that could lead to global catastrophe. – Michael Hayden
The first thing I did after getting a Master’s degree – and the Air Force was very kind; they let me stay on at school to get a Master’s – I went to Denver for the Armed Forces Air Intelligence School, six months. Fundamentally, we had a major effort on in Southeast Asia, and this was training folks to support that effort. – Michael Hayden
The arc of technology is in the direction of unbreakable encryption, and no laws are going to get in the way of that reality. – Michael Hayden
People have a right to privacy, but they also have a right to live. Fundamentally, we need cybersecurity and need to secure communications as well. – Michael Hayden
Anger can be a useful emotion; it’s built into our genetic code to help with self preservation. But it can also be destructive, even when it is justified. – Michael Hayden
There’s still a lot of things you can legitimately do to make America safe through electronic surveillance. – Michael Hayden
One of the things that distinguishes the CIA from the State Department is that the CIA is both asked to, and authorized to, steal secrets. So if the question is whether the CIA steals secrets, the answer is yes. – Michael Hayden
Once you’re in a network, you can do a whole bunch of things to that network. It’s just that NSA doesn’t have the authority to do that. – Michael Hayden
I used to have a little saying I used when people said, ‘What are your priorities?’ I’d give them a bit of government alphabet soup. I’d say ‘CTCPROW: Counterterrorism, counterproliferation, rest of the world.’ – Michael Hayden
