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" Nothing more threatens Vladimir Putin than not being able to track his own citizens. "
Michael Hayden
More
Citizens
Nothing
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" 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
Day
Great
Good
" My life experience confirms that the U.S. government frequently overclassifies data. But that's a stronger argument for not dumping large volumes of government traffic on an unclassified personal server than it is a justification for retroactively challenging classification decisions. "
Michael Hayden
Decisions
Life
Government
" 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
Me
Going
Said
" 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. "
Michael Hayden
Argument
Powerful
Transparency
" 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. "
Michael Hayden
Wisdom
Security
Events
" I blame the Russians for a lot, but pinning the creation of ISIS on them is a murky, tenuous, triple-carom bank shot at best. "
Michael Hayden
Best
Blame
Creation
" 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. "
Michael Hayden
College
Enjoy
Writing
" 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
Places
Pay
War
" 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
Saying
People
Government
" 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
Just
Authority
Things
" 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. "
Michael Hayden
Nation
Choice
You
" 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
" We live inside a democracy, and you know, public will matters in a democracy. I just hope it's informed public will, and frankly, when the decisions are made, you understand the costs. "
Michael Hayden
Democracy
Decisions
Know
" 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
" 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
" 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
" People don't question American power. What people need to be convinced of is American will. "
Michael Hayden
People
Power
Question
" The problem with cyber weapons for a country like ours is the ability to control them. "
Michael Hayden
Like
Control
Country
" 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
" There's this movie, 'Zero Dark Thirty' about the hunt for Osama bin Laden. Some have complained that too many 'secrets' were dished out by the intelligence and special operations communities to director Kathryn Bigelow, screenwriter Mark Boal and their crew, part of a broader pattern of using intelligence for political effect. "
Michael Hayden
Intelligence
Special
Political
" 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. "
Michael Hayden
Nice
Down
Mean
" Politicization - the shading of analysis to fit prevailing policy or politics - is the harshest criticism one can make of an intelligence organization. It strikes beyond questions of competence to the fundamental ethic of the enterprise, which is, or should be, truth telling. "
Michael Hayden
Politics
Questions
Intelligence
" Accusations fit on a bumper sticker; the truth takes longer. "
Michael Hayden
Sticker
Takes
Truth
" This program has been successful in detecting and preventing attacks inside the United States. "
Michael Hayden
Inside
United States
Successful
" An intelligence analyst may attribute an attack to al Qaeda, whereas a policy maker could opt for the more general 'extremist.' "
Michael Hayden
More
May
Attack
" 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. "
Michael Hayden
Personality
You
Strong
" 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
Right
Relationship
People
" Al Qaida changes; Al Qaida adapts. We have to adapt as well. We rely on resources to do that. Reducing resources beyond a certain point will make us less able to adapt as our enemy adapts. "
Michael Hayden
Will
Changes
Beyond
" MEMRI counts the federal government as a customer for its analysis, and the MEMRI logo is often visible on the B-roll video of major news networks. Other private firms create their own information rather than tracking that of others. "
Michael Hayden
Information
Create
News
" I've often said that the ISIS-Syria-Iraq mess is about as bad as it could be. "
Michael Hayden
About
Mess
Often