Michael Hayden

Michael Hayden

"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."
33 Quotes
"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."
Michael Hayden
"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."
Michael Hayden
"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
"The arc of technology is in the direction of unbreakable encryption, and no laws are going to get in the way of that reality."
Michael Hayden
"CIA relies on a partner's focus, linguistic agility, and cultural depth; in return, the partner benefits from CIA's resources, technology, and global view."
Michael Hayden
"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
"Intelligence is often viewed as a profession that steals secrets and then knits those secrets together for policymakers in order to inform their judgments."
Michael Hayden
"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."
Michael Hayden
"When the intelligence is making a policymaker too happy, he ought to challenge it, and even if he doesn't, the intelligence briefer needs to launch a red team against his own conclusions to see if he can hold his ground."
Michael Hayden
"Presidents get to decide how their intelligence is served up to them, and it's the job of intelligence to adjust."
Michael Hayden
"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."
Michael Hayden
"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."
Michael Hayden
"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."
Michael Hayden
"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
"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
"President Obama and his successors are dependent on the 100,000-plus people inside the American intelligence community - the people Edward Snowden betrayed."
Michael Hayden
"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."
Michael Hayden
"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
"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."
Michael Hayden
"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
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