Hayden, NSA and the Road to 9/11

This article originally appeared on  Just Security on December 7, 2017.   Retired Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the NSA and CIA (and now, a national security analyst at CNN), has recently emerged as a leading  critic of the Trump administration, but not so long ago, he was widely criticized for his role in the post-9/11 surveillance abuses. With the publication of his memoir, Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror,  Hayden launched his reputational rehab campaign.Like most such memoirs by high-level Washington insiders, Hayden ’s tends to be heavy on self-justification and light on genuine introspection and accountability. Also, when a memoir is written by someone who spent their professional life in the classified world of the American Intelligence Community, an additional caveat is in order: The claims made by the aut hor are often impossible for the lay reader to verify. This is certainly the case for Playing to The Edge, an account of Hayden ’s time as director of the NSA, and subsequently, the CIA.Fortunately, with respect to at least one episode Hayden describes, litigation I initiated under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has produced documentary evidence of Hayden ’s role in the 9/11 intelligence failure and subsequent civil liberties violations. The consequences of Hayden’s misconduct during this time continue to be felt today. First, some background. The War Inside NSA, 1996 to 2001By the mid-1990s, a group ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs