Michael V. Hayden, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, gave an exit interview to reporters at the agency’s headquarters in Langley, Va. (Photo: Luis M. Alvarez/Associated Press)Michael V. Hayden, the departing director of the Central Intelligence Agency, struck a defiant and occasionally combative tone on Thursday as he vigorously defended the C.I.A.’s network of secret prisons and its aggressive interrogation methods.
Giving no ground to critics who argue that the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation program used torture and produced little information about the workings of Al Qaeda, Mr. Hayden credited the C.I.A. with striking repeated blows on the terror network, and said that any effort to investigate the past would breed risk aversion in the ranks of the clandestine service.
He dismissed congressional efforts to force C.I.A. interrogators to abide by the military’s interrogation rules, saying it was a “real shot in the dark” to expect that a slate of non-coercive interrogation methods would be effective against Al Qaeda’s senior leaders.
The C.I.A. years ago abandoned some of its most aggressive techniques, including “waterboarding.” But Mr. Hayden still defended the agency’s response in the weeks and months after the Sept. 11 attacks, and the now controversial decisions by senior C.I.A. officials “for whom doing nothing is an immoral choice,” he said.
“The agency did none of this out of enthusiasm. It did it out of duty and it did it with the best legal advice it had,” he said.
Mr. Hayden, who retired from the Air Force last summer after nearly 39-year military career, has drawn fire for his outspoken defense both of the C.I.A. program and the Bush Administration’s domestic eavesdropping program, which he ran as head of the National Security Agency.
He is being replaced at the C.I.A. by Leon E. Panetta, a former congressman and White House chief of staff.
With days remaining in his tenure at the C.I.A, he said he would be proud to be remembered for advocating a muscular strategy against Al Qaeda.
“When the history of this agency during this period is written, the last thing you’re going to say that it was risk averse. Trust me,” he said.
Since last summer, he said, American and Pakistani operatives have taken aim at Al Qaeda’s hub in the Pakistani mountains. There have been dozens of airstrikes by C.I.A. operated Predator drones in recent months, although Mr. Hayden would not acknowledge the existence of the attacks.
Mr. Hayden said that the attrition rates at the C.I.A. are at an historic low, that tens of thousands of applicants submit resumes each year, and that the agency would soon reach the goals for new analysts and clandestine officers set by President Bush in 2004. But he said that the C.I.A. would continue to bring in a steady flow of new recruits, even if it meant early retirement for some agency veterans.
21 Comments
it’s an old argument…Do the ends justify the means?
sometimes, maybe…but i’d feel a lot better about it if there weren’t so many self-serving, ignorant [of the constitution], clueless men and women at all levels of our government…and if the bushies hadn’t set the new american record for incompetence.
if we can do better, now is the time and opportunity to prove it.
— JP, milltown, njIt’s funny how Obama was called naive by Clinton, Biden, Dodd and Richardson when he said that if elected, he would actively strike at Al Qaeda in Pakistan whenever intelligence showed their leaders within range. Today it’s Bush Administration policy and yielding real results. Heck, even Hayden is bragging about it.
Obama was also the first candidate to repeatedly say that Pakistan was the most dangerous place in the world and our focus needed to be in the Pakistan-Afghan “border” where Al Qaeda and the Taliban were regrouping. I’m happy he won, he seems to understand that fighting terror is about being both tough and smart.
— AxlIs he telling us how small his brain really is in this picture? What a sociopath!
— Lázaro CárdenasWe need to face it…there are too many Americans, Hayden, Bush, Cheney, and many members of Congress included who believe the Constitution and laws are advisory and can be ignored if you can develop a self-serving, justification for torture and every other practice which has violated our values…isn’t this the moral relativism Bush aborhed?
— KP, Waterford NYAren’t you worried about traveling outside of the U.S. Mr. Hayden? I would be, b/c torture, which you so proudly committed, is an internationally recognized WAR CRIME, which signatories to the Geneva Conventions have an obligation to prosecute…you’ll be tracked and evehtually prosecuted even if it’s 10 or 20 years from now.
Oops, I forgot your arguement…elites in the gov can commit really series crimes if it’s done for a really good reason
Good show, CIA and FBI. Not one terror attack in the US since 9/11. Damn the rights of people who come here to kill thousands upon thousands of our children, our parents, our spouses, our people.
Sadly, only when some new horror even beyond 9/11 occurs, God forbid, will the self-appointed moralists who think they are the public defenders for the terrorists, suddenly wake up to the fact that we are living in a world with millions of people who want to kill us.
— rayleequootedHayden is the BRUTE OF BRUTES. He’s a horrible example of “manhood”. Good riddance.
— DrNovaHe’s right, though, in one way. The last thing people will say is that the American intelligence services were risk averse. The first thing they say, however…
On an unrelated note, I swear there’s a photograph of Cheney in that exact same pose.
— DanielJust like the Vp, this guy doesn’t care about the Geneva Convention….Without it the only difference between us and the bad guys is we have badder weapons………..
— tobyMaybe the country will be better with the new guy….
The U.S. has been quite safe since 9-11. Future generations will give credit to the strong leadership of President Bush and Michael Hayden - particularly if domestic terrorist attacks occur during the Obama administration.
— John D.hey rayleequooted
do you really want to live in a country where the president believes he can ignore the law, pick and choose amongst those he/she thinks dosen’t fit w/in his/her self-proclaimed view of constitutionally authority, which really is monarchy.
— KP, Waterford NYbush and the republicans who enabled the commission of war crimes are extremists…going as far a stating they could abduct Americans off of the street and hold them indefinetly don’t seem to understand that a future prez may use this sick theory to engage in more destructive policies.
Terrorists want to hurt, change our way of life…but in reality they don’t have the capability to do any such thing. only we can destroy our way of life by overreacting to this threat
CIA: SERE, McCall, waterboarding, ad nauseum. Used to be classified. Now it ain’t.
Give it a break, intel world. You are all looking to keep a paycheck. That’s the long and short of it. If you really think what has been done has really helped us dodge the next attack, do you think that your little world in McLean is any more safe than Iraq? I hope that God blesses us, because we are going to need it from all the executive “overarching” and “sweetspotting” we have been forced to swallow listening to all the intel garbage passed around.
I’ve seen it all from the inside out, and all I can say is that I hope that Obama can see through your tricks, ruses, ploys, and plants.
The best thing to happen to the good ole USA is to sweep out ALL the wierdo intel crowd and get a new group. Both government and contractor.
— secretagentmanThe neo-cons have been trying to instill fear in the American people for 30 years. People act like 9-11 was some major nuclear strike or something. It was 9 guys with box knives. The only thing other countries fear of us is our nuclear arsenal. They have proved once again just like Vietnam and Korea they are willing to take us into a long drawn out war that divides the country. Real Americans don’t live in fear. Our forefathers would be ashamed of some of us. They were the brave and once the cowardly took over our government we have been reeling ever since. We cannot continue this scared of our own shadow neo-con way.
— Andrew#12 — Andrew
I don’t think you have 9-11 in the correct perspective. We are talking about almost 3,000 people lost in the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor. If those towers had been full, we would have seen a lot more casualties. Remember, the early estimates were in the range of 50,000 deaths. If not for the bravery and aggressiveness of the folks who helped bring down United Airlines Flight 93 the civilian casualties would have been much worse. I don’t see how we could have risked having Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and North Korea all behaving without fear of U.S. retaliation. Under the Obama administration, however, we will see how our enemies react to a return to Carter/Clinton style foreign policy.
— John D.NINETEEN guys with box cutters. Four planes. Two for the WTC. One for the pentagon. One for the white house which passsengers heroically foiled
— CarolineI get the impression that some people on the right are so defensive of Bush’s legacy that they fervently wish we get hit again during Obama’s administration just to seal the deal that Bush kept the homeland safe since 9/11. These folks keep saying we’ll get hit every day, when asked why, the only reason they cite, in various incarnations, is that Democrats will be running the White House.
Perhaps Bush should have read and done something about the memo delivered to him in August 2001 by Condi Rice titled, “Bin Laden and Al Qaeda Determined to Strike Inside the United States.” Perhaps Clinton should have paid more attention to Bin Laden when he was living openly in Sudan. Perhaps Bush ‘41 shouldn’t have walked away from Afghanistan in 1989 after the Soviets left, thereby allowing (our allies) Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to help form the Taliban. The point is, every administration makes mistakes, some of which add up to bite us pretty hard eventually. I don’t blame Bush for 9/11 and I won’t blame any president, Republican or Democrat for actions committed by murderous fanatics just to score political points.
— AxlHayden, Bush and Cheney were and are bullies. Their policies have stirred up unprecedented hatred of America throughout the Middle East. We will pay for the grievous sins of this vile administration for many generations.
— Steve Hunter“I don’t think you have 9-11 in the correct perspective. We are talking about almost 3,000 people lost in the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor”
Ridiculous. What’s Pearl Harbor got to do with 19 criminals? Absolutely nothing. This is Bush “logic.”
The United States armed forces have murdered something on the order of a million people since that one criminal event, all of whose perpetrators died in the act, and virtually none - none - of that million had anything to do with 9/11.
Not only that, but more than 10,000,000 Americans have died since 9/11. Americans murdering other Americans have killed roughly 140,000 in that period. Death on the highways has taken another 280,000 or so. Medical malpractice has killed the best part of a million.
“NINETEEN guys with box cutters. Four planes. Two for the WTC. One for the pentagon. One for the white house which passsengers heroically foiled”
Only partly right. The plane over Pennsylvania was almost certainly shot down, most likely on Cheney’s orders. The distribution of the wreckage field and a tested (stolen)sample of seat material for nitrates make this conclusion inescapable. The “let’s roll!” rubbish is just that, rubbish.
The entire event could have been avoided by the most elementary security measures - locked cocpits andd more thorough passaenger checks, long advocated. After all, there had been scores of skyjackings.
— JOHN CHUCKMAN, TORONTOI too am astonished at the venom shown here and elsewhere by Bush’s adherents — and dismayed by their failure to see that, in their outlook, their approach to rights is indistinguishable from that of the 19 guys with box cutters who struck the United States on 9/11.
“Due process? The presumption of innocence? Hell no, we don’t need any of that. We *know* who’s guilty and we’ll deal with them the old-fashioned way.”
Or, as the line from the grand old movie THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE had it, “Badges? Badges? We don’t need no stinkin’ badges.”
Oh, I forgot — the guy who says that is a crook and the head of a gang of crooks. Silly me.
It’s precisely the Bush Administration’s embrace of lawlessness that has so damaged our reputation around the world and given us a reputation as hypocrites. Every time Bush said, “They hate our freedom,” I winced, because I wondered about what Bush, Cheney, and their colleagues thought of our freedoms, given that they were so willing, even eager, to violate our freedoms.
— R. B. Bernstein#17 — JOHN CHUCKMAN, TORONTO
You write: “The plane over Pennsylvania was almost certainly shot down, most likely on Cheney’s orders.”
I don’t know how to put this in a kind manner, but you are obviously delusional and need professional help. The good news is that things are not really as bad as they seem to you now. The real world is actually very beautiful. :)
— John D.It’s a relief to know there are many bloggers available who know infinitely more about intelligence than those idiots, like Hayden, who somehow kept us safe for the last 7+ years. Leon Panetta as an alternative is worrisome.
— NCFew Regrets? Does that mean you have no morality or conscience? Wiretaps I personally am neutral on, in my opinion if you want something to be confidential don’t say it on a phone. The fact that you can deem another human being as a “non-person” at all should be your biggest regret. It is the thought process such as this that brought about the worst human tragedy in world history.
— Matt in Des Moines