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" George Tenet was actually a very strong centralizing force. If you met George by personality, George met with the president six days out of seven: nontrivial attribute inside the federal government. And George was head of the CIA. "

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" The FISA Amendment Act of 2008 actually allows some of the things we were doing under the president's authority only against al Qaeda, it allows them for all legitimate foreign intelligence purposes. "

Michael Hayden

Doing

Against

Authority

" Counterterrorism, counterproliferation, and counterintelligence are staples. The four countries of highest interest - Russia, China, Iran and North Korea - are constants. "

" There's still a lot of things you can legitimately do to make America safe through electronic surveillance. "

" 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

" Presidents get to decide how their intelligence is served up to them, and it's the job of intelligence to adjust. "

Michael Hayden

Adjust

Decide

" Despite a campaign that was based on a very powerful promise of transparency, President Obama, and again in my view quite correctly, has used the state secrets argument in a variety of courts, as much as President Bush. "

" The use of these techniques against these terrorists made us safer. It really did work. "

Michael Hayden

Use

Work

" Public discussion of how we determine al Qaeda intentions, I just - I can't see how that can do anything but harm the security of the nation. "

" Our nation counts on us to have the expertise and the insight to flag the risks and the opportunities that lie ahead, and to keep our eye on all the critical international concerns that face our nation right now. "

" 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 NSA with about twice as much money as I had prior to 9/11. "

" Great weight should be given to the judgment of professionals on what information, if disclosed, would harm national security. "

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

" Intelligence is often viewed as a profession that steals secrets and then knits those secrets together for policymakers in order to inform their judgments. "

" 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. "

" Apple and Google want to create encryption for which they could not provide you the key. Their business model will not survive if the American government has a special relationship with them that requires them to surrender this kind of information. "

" There is an unarguable downside to unbreakable encryption. "

Michael Hayden

Encryption

Downside

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

" 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. "

" The 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that said Iran had paused its nuclear weaponization work also reported with high confidence that such work had been going on through 2003. How far did they get? That's an important question, but I fear that the Iranians will never answer it, and we will not insist that they do. "

" Thoreau points out clearly that civil disobedience gets its moral authority by the willingness to suffer the penalties from disobeying a law, even if you think that law is unjust. "

" I enjoyed writing in school. I don't know that I was all that good at it in school. I worked at it later. I feel comfortable writing now. I enjoy writing now. I suspect, like most college students, I viewed writing then to be more tedious. "

" A significant U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan has been continuous since October 2001, and President Obama's short-lived 'surge' in 2009 was a continuation of his predecessor's buildup there. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" Responsibility demands action, and dealing with the immediate threat must naturally be a top priority. "

" 'End strength' - the total number of government employees you can have at the end of the year. That's a separate exercise and requires independent energy, independent effort with the Congress to get the ceiling of your government employees raised. "

" I don't know if the European Union contributes a great deal to espionage. At the union level, they talk about commerce and privacy. But to keep citizens safe, that remains a responsibility back in national capitals. "

" Intelligence collection is not confined to the communications of adversaries or of the guilty. Rather, it's about gaining information otherwise unavailable that would help keep Americans safe and free. "

" 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. "