Home
Authors
Tags
App
Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App
" 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
Family
Inside
Most
Related Quotes:
" All enterprises and major players need to pay attention to the needs of the government of the country of which they are a part. At one level, it would be unconscionable for a company like Huawei not to be responsive to Chinese national-security needs. "
Michael Hayden
Country
Government
Need
" Accusations fit on a bumper sticker; the truth takes longer. "
Michael Hayden
Sticker
Takes
Truth
" 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. "
Michael Hayden
Evidence
Reputation
Culture
" When I was at the CIA I asked my civilian advisory board to tackle some tough questions. Among the toughest: In a political culture that every day demands more transparency and more public accountability from every aspect of national life, could American intelligence continue to survive and succeed? That jury is still out. "
Michael Hayden
Intelligence
Day
Culture
" In the Cold War, a lot of Soviet actions could be explained as extensions of Czarist imperial ambitions, but that didn't stop us from studying Marxism in theory and Communism in practice to better understand that adversary. "
Michael Hayden
Communism
Better
Practice
" I told them that free people always had to decide where to draw the line between their liberty and their security. I noted that the attacks would almost certainly push us as a nation more toward security. "
Michael Hayden
Push
People
Free
" Counterterrorism, counterproliferation, and counterintelligence are staples. The four countries of highest interest - Russia, China, Iran and North Korea - are constants. "
Michael Hayden
China
Interest
North Korea
" 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
Water
Used
Last
" One might oppose the CIA program, but Abu Ghraib it ain't. "
Michael Hayden
Program
CIA
Might
" 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. "
Michael Hayden
Presence
Been
President
" 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. "
Michael Hayden
Future
Capture
Good
" I don't want to be overly dramatic, but Iraq and Syria are gone, and they aren't coming back, at least not as centralized states. "
Michael Hayden
Gone
Dramatic
Back
" 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. "
Michael Hayden
Discussion
Nation
Harm
" A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas, and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not. "
Michael Hayden
New Day
Day
Ideas
" 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. "
Michael Hayden
Community
Changes
Future
" 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. "
Michael Hayden
Responsibility
Privacy
Know
" 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
Me
American
Apple
" This program has been successful in detecting and preventing attacks inside the United States. "
Michael Hayden
Inside
United States
Successful
" In the great battle of Antietam, still the bloodiest day in American history, Union forces were led by Gen. George McClellan, an incredibly cautious man. "
Michael Hayden
Man
Day
American
" Americans are very practical folks. Accustomed to hard choices in their own lives, they are willing to give us in intelligence a lot of slack as we make the hard choices our profession demands. "
Michael Hayden
Intelligence
Hard
Choices
" My personal view is that Iran, left to its own devices, will get itself to that step right below a nuclear weapon, that permanent breakout stage, so the needle isn't quite in the red for the international community. And, frankly, that will be as destabilizing as their actually having a weapon. "
Michael Hayden
Right
View
Community
" 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. "
Michael Hayden
Company
Work
Random
" I've often said that the ISIS-Syria-Iraq mess is about as bad as it could be. "
Michael Hayden
About
Mess
Often
" Access to the security clearance database would disgorge even more detailed personal information, including the foreign contacts of American officials. "
Michael Hayden
Security
More
Information
" A person seeking to be the President of the United States should not suggest violence in any way. "
Michael Hayden
President
Way
Violence
" President Obama came to office with a strong belief that America had overreached, that we had become too involved. It matched the national mood, and indeed, there was some evidence that it was true. "
Michael Hayden
America
True
Strong
" To be perfectly candid, we're better at stealing other people's secrets than anyone else in the world. But we self-limit. We steal secrets to keep our citizens free and safe. "
Michael Hayden
World
People
Free
" 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
OK
" Responsibility demands action, and dealing with the immediate threat must naturally be a top priority. "
Michael Hayden
Dealing
Responsibility
Top
" 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. "
Michael Hayden
Opportunities
Face
Lie