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" For all of its well-deserved reputation for pragmatism, American popular culture frequently nurtures or at least tolerates preposterous views and theories. Witness the 9/11 'truthers' who, lacking any evidence whatsoever, claim that 9/11 was a Bush administration plot. "

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" When at the CIA, I was fond of saying that many jihadis join the movement for the same reasons that young Americans join the Crips and the Bloods: youthful alienation, the need to belong to something greater than self, the search for meaningful identity. But it also matters what gang you join. "

Michael Hayden

Saying

Self

" Global security can be formed or threatened by heads of state whose wisdom, folly and obsessions shape global events. But often it is the security practitioners, those rarely in the headlines but whose craft and energy quietly break new ground, who keep us safe or put us in peril. "

" Renditions before and since 9/11 share some basic features. They have been conducted lawfully, responsibly and with a clear and single purpose: Get terrorists off the street and gain intelligence on those still at large. Our detention and interrogation programs flow from the same inescapable logic. "

" The Constitution defends all of us against unreasonable search and seizure. What constitutes reasonableness depends upon threat. "

Michael Hayden

Constitution

" We're an organization with a clear objective: to protect the American people. We have a number of missions that feed into that, to protect America, and one of those missions we share with the council, which is to help our policymakers make sense of global events. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" If we are going to conduct espionage in the future, we are going to have to make some changes in the relationship between the intelligence community and the public it serves. "

" I'm a career Air Force officer. We have a saying in the Air Force: 'If you want people to be with you at the crash, you've got to put them on the manifest.' And so I was always of the view to almost leave no stone unturned when you're up there briefing the Hill. "

" When I became director of CIA, it was just clear to me intuitively, without a whole lot of science behind it, that we had expanded rapidly and inefficiently. So I arbitrarily picked a number, 10 percent, and I said over the next 12 months, we are going to reduce our reliance on contractors by 10 percent. "

Michael Hayden

Going

Said

" In my heart of hearts, I don't think it's a good position to say that Guantanamo is not an acceptable answer for anyone we might capture now or in the future. "

" I've often said that the ISIS-Syria-Iraq mess is about as bad as it could be. "

" This program has been successful in detecting and preventing attacks inside the United States. "

" Access to the security clearance database would disgorge even more detailed personal information, including the foreign contacts of American officials. "

Michael Hayden

Security

Information

" I think the Sino-American relationship is the most important geo-strategic question facing us. "

" One might oppose the CIA program, but Abu Ghraib it ain't. "

" As much as we might look for opportunities to keep Iraq together, we need to be prepared for the reality that it's not going to stay together. "

" The intelligence community is governed by the same legal and ethical standards as the rest of American government and society, but an operational imperative is here, too. An intelligence community charged with global responsibilities cannot be successful without diversity of thought, culture and language. "

" 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. "

" Nothing more threatens Vladimir Putin than not being able to track his own citizens. "

Michael Hayden

Citizens

Nothing

" ThinThread was not the program of record of my predecessor, Ken Minihan, OK. I did not make ThinThread the program of record while I was director. After I left in 2005, Keith Alexander also chose not to make ThinThread the program of record. "

Michael Hayden

Did

Record

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The question is how much of your privacy and your convenience and your commerce do you want your nation's security apparatus to squeeze in order to keep you safe? And it is a choice that we have to make. "

" After the attacks on September 11th, we all learned lessons. "

" The arc of technology is in the direction of unbreakable encryption, and no laws are going to get in the way of that reality. "

" Accusations fit on a bumper sticker; the truth takes longer. "

" The point I wanted to make was, as we have moved forward on the war on terrorism, FISA has been increasingly effective in terms of results. "

" An intelligence analyst may attribute an attack to al Qaeda, whereas a policy maker could opt for the more general 'extremist.' "

Michael Hayden

May

Attack

" In my own private-sector work, I have become intrigued with RIWI, a Canadian based company that surveys random respondents on the Web to measure attitudes in otherwise hard-to-reach places. "