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" 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. "

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" It's hard to brief in the Oval. You know, you can't - no visual aids, hard to roll out something in front of somebody. "

Michael Hayden

Know

Hard

Front

" 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. "

" There is no worse place for an intelligence service like CIA to be than on Page 1, above the fold in your daily newspaper. "

" Our inaction created the opportunity for the Russians to reenter the Middle East in a powerful way for the first time since 1973. "

" '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. "

" Dissenting analysts passionate about their positions are not unusual in the American intelligence community. Their presence - or even the rejection - of their favored positions is not prima face evidence of politicization. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

" At the end of the 30 Years War then, Europe broadly decided to separate the sacred from the secular in its political culture. I know that is an oversimplification, but it is instructive, and it led to a growth in religious tolerance that has characterized the best of Western life since. "

" There's a bigger difference between the first and second Bush administrations than there is between Bush and Obama. That's really true. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

" '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. "

" There is an unarguable downside to unbreakable encryption. "

Michael Hayden

Encryption

Downside

" 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. "

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

Michael Hayden

Citizens

Nothing

" 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. "

" There is no part of the executive branch that more exists on the outer edge of executive prerogative than the American intelligence community - the intelligence community, CIA, covert action. My literal responsibility as director of CIA with regard to covert action was to inform the Congress - not to seek their approval, to inform. "

" 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

" What Edward Snowden did amounted to the greatest hemorrhaging of legitimate American secrets in the history of my nation. "

" It's good to remind intelligence producers and consumers alike about the need to 'warn of emerging conditions, trends, threats and opportunities' and the potential for discontinuities. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Xi agreed to the American definition of legitimate espionage. In other words, you don't use the power of the state to steal secrets for profit. "