Transcripts For CSPAN2 General Michael Hayden Discusses Playing To The Edge 20170506

41 year career in the air force and in the National Intelligence and National Security area and talk to us about his book, playing to the edge american intelligence in the age of terror. The title playing to the edge is kind of a Sports Metaphor i think. Its like pushing the envelope or playing right to the edge of the field with truck in your cleats and its appropriate that general hayden would use Sports Metaphors. He practically was born in the shadow of the Pittsburgh Steelers stadium. They tore down my home to build three rivers stadium. All right. And we didnt mind because it was the steelers. Modestly dangerous comment. He was born in pittsburgh, of Irish Catholic family and the son of a welder. In Junior High School he was quarterback of his Football Team and coach of the Football Team then was the son of the founder of the steelers, the connection with his team who goes way back and theres actually a road now along the side of the stadium called Michael Hayden road and he was equipment manager working the sidelines of the steelers when he was in college at duquesne and doing air force rotc and also went and got his na in American History from st. Peters Elementary School in north catholic high school, and he makes it clear in this very candid and personal memoir how much his young education really mattered. He says toward the end of the book, the further i got in my career, the more i realize the patient so here we are at the school had he has a lot to say about the importance of education in that age. And i understand you still get up early on in the fall and go to mass, drive to pittsburgh. I do. So you must have been a tenant or a captain, just maybe eight years into your career when a major event for the Intelligence Community was underway. Im talking about the Church Hearings into the behavior of the cia and fbi which took place in 1975. How was this important to you . I was a point in my career on guam. Senior officer and frankly, ive gotten on wall and 72, came back at the time, b52 operations over Southeast Asia so im very tactically focused with all these things going on in washington, it made the headlines of the stars and stripes but it didnt affect me personally and i didnt dig into them very much but steve and i were talking before we came in that i certainly learned the fine print of everything that came out of church pipe in the 1970s because that was the structure that we had been decided that we would use to govern the american Intelligence Community and very briefly, 375 it wasnt so much that the agencies were breaking the law. It was more that the law hadnt paid any attention to the agencies. There wasnt a clear code of thou shalt not. And then it just kind of floated back and forth about the clear distinctions that you need to have in an enterprise that frankly was so large, so powerful and secretive and i hope we get to this later stephen but one of the things i learned is that at church pike architecture, we then decided we would government american espionage, is now itself eroding. Is now itself is looking insufficient to an awful lot of americans in terms of governing what it is we do which is one of the things i suggest in the book as what now . In terms of going forward. On august 17 in 1975, father frank church appeared on nbc on meet the press to get a summary of what his committee had covered. He was a political actor at that point, planning to run for president until canada terminated his candidacy and he made spacefor jimmy carter. And he wrote , he said discussing the nsa which general hayden later ran from 1999 to 2005, he said without mentioning the nsa by name, in the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected Technological Capabilities that enable us to monitor the messages that go through the air. Kind of touching. He talks about how they could even intercept telegrams. Its got more sophisticated then, he says its necessary and important the United States look abroad at potential enemies, we must know at the same time that capability that anytime could be turned around on the American People and no american would have any privacy left. Such is the capability to monitor everything, telephone conversations, telegrams, doesnt matter, there would be no place to hide. Then he says if this government ever became a tyranny, if an authoritarian ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity of the intelligence communities of the government could enable it to impose total tyranny and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful efforts to combine together in resistance no matter how privately it was done is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of thistechnology. I dont ever want to see this country go across that bridge. I know the capacity is there could make total tyranny in america and we must see to it that this agency, all agencies operate within the law and in proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. A quote at length from senator church because i think it sums up general haydens career that he was working at many levels including the topmost to make sure this technology can operate within the law and under proper provision so that we never cross over that abyss. So your job was to make sure that what you said never happens. But over time, the capabilities obviously grew and the possibilities increased so. Wow, theres a lot to unpack here, let me take a little at a time. Come of it might be revealing, you got senator church, i was fond of saying when i woke up and 97 that the nsa needed only two things to be successful. It needed to be secretive and it needed to be powerful and we exist in a political culture that frankly addressed only two things. Secrecy and power. And so youve got this unnatural position inside of a western democracy but you do need what it is that the nsa can offer. The trick is that its pointed toward the nations adversaries and bythe way, its foreign adversaries. And its never turned inward against the American People, threatening its liberties. Thats pretty nice, thats a nice dichotomy. Thats almost manichaean. Pointed over here, dont dont pointed over there. For example when we are flooding the zone against the communications of the soviet union and let me take a specific example, lets use soviet srf, Strategic Rocket forces. Their big headquarters in moscow and it got to communicate to their icbm fields beyond the urals on the steps of soviet asia. We would monitor that network like nobodys business as i am fond of saying, looking looking for works of interest in theircommunication. And there isnt a civil libertarian or a senator who would ever lift a finger with regard to concerns about that. What happens which makes it more difficult and senator church and those folks in the 70s ever imagined, by 2000 and picking that carefully, this is pre9 11 stuff, its prior to the terrorist attack and the kind of reshuffling of the balance of security, liberty, privacy, safety, i testified in open session in front of the House Intel Committee and the issue we had is that again, no one paid any attention to us going afterStrategic Rocket forces network. But if you wanted us to do for you in the 21st century what we had done for you in the 20th century, in this case since there was no longer a soviet union, you were more concerned about terrorist communications, proliferator communications, communications of transnational criminals and so on, if you wanted us to get them for you and you did and that was our job, what we said in 2000, april 2000 and open session, what we said was you realize those communications no longer exists and not other network over there. Those communications coexist with your gmail. And they are skidding through those International Lights with your stuff right alongside of this. So its even more complex than senator church teams to indicate was this manichaean world where looking here is good and looking there is bad. What im telling you is the stuff that used to be here is now here and it commingled with the things you still want us to go get. So its even more difficult than senator church laid out. In other words, we had to go to you, frankly thats why were testifying to get the money and in essence the authority in a small way, the authority to go after these signals and the only way we believe we could get that was to actually convince the congress and indirectly you that even though your stuff would be getting by, we wouldnt touch it. That we wouldnt grab it. So this is even more dramatic and difficult in its own way, potentially more dangerous than what senator church tried to put out there as kind of a warning signal in the 1970s. You are in command of the nsa, on september 11, 2001. So i went to work, it was clear there wasnt a cloud in the sky. It was tuesday, i was up late watching monday night football. I came in, went and got a haircut. Came back, went to my off center, popped in, anything on the scope . No, things pretty normal, thank you. Went to the office and again i was having my meeting and as i was having one session, my executive assistant Sidney Vargas came in and said a plane at one of the trade centers. My reaction was it mustve been a small plane, how did that happen, it was a clear day. Went back to my meeting and she comes in and says a plane hit the other tower and i immediately said get the other head of security up. And a few minutes later as hes coming from one door of my office, cindy is coming through the other door saying there are reports of explosions in the mall , and thats a garble of the plane hitting the pentagon. And from a security standing, the chief of security is standing there and i never said a word. I said all nonessential out of here now, tell them to evacuate. Then we decided you live up here, you know what it looks like. We tried to get everybody we could out of the two highrises. And into that low rider. Its a threestory building thats near 32, its a steel building. Its the original Office Building so for obvious reasons to get them out of a highrise and into the low rider. For my benefit, thats where our center was. In the universe that i needed. And we just began to turn this massive enterprise in the direction of this target and we knew now this impending war, georgia tech called me a little bit later and said what do you got . I said george, we all knew it was al qaeda but their network is buying up with the conversation, and the gunfire and theyre all patting themselves on the back. Late that afternoon, early evening, again, remember how clear a day it was. Someone reminded me our counterterrorism shop, and you all know for immediate is the headquarters of the nsa. You probably know what a lot of audiences dont also the biggest field station, the nsa. Its just not managing the enterprise, its about 50 percent of the enterprise and the other 50 percent is kind of everywhere else. One of the shops that was in one of the highrises was counterterrorism. When i say counterterrorism, i dont mean filing paperwork , i mean people with headsets on. Listening to the intercept. You cant move them. All right, we cant stand the breaking condition, weve got to leave the counterterrorism shop and one of the highrises and just by itself, i want to remind you theyre still there so i went up, went in and you can look through the windows and see the darkening sky. I had bought, i couldnt but if we were nine stories higher, you couldve seen fort mchenry which is one of the last four departments of an american citizen. There were people from our Logistics Force packing up blackout curtains because they would have been obvious, like someone couldnt evacuate so i said this is weird, were talking about blackout curtains in the 21st century. The danger will be different. I walked around the room, most of them were rather american. They had the National Economy that we were dealing with, they had a special trauma to deal with. They had their jobs and because they were arabamerican i think it was even personal trauma for them, just given the nature of the impact, i didnt make any speeches, i just walked around hand on shoulder, nodded in their and so on. We, the agency turned on a dime. Its a very powerful dedicated thing in there. And we just like i said began to shift, we said were going over here. And were going to focus on this target. And its actually in a very short period of time began to produce something of great value, keeping you safe and making them feel unsafe. You might ask, where were you on september 9 or september 7 . And the answer was, im talking about this in the book the cause we had a variety of priorities. We had a lot of things that were competing for our attention. Those icbms were still there. They were now under russian control. So i mean immediately, at 10 30 on that tuesday morning, i didnt have anybodys permission, i started in. As busy as i could and one of the things that came out, one of the great new wishing initiatives was operation stellar wind. It was kind of a cool name for an operation. It means nothing. You cant know anything about it. Maybe does the same thing and we did our air operation over libya, we call it operation odyssey go on. Eloquence good. Obviously on sound like something a little girl would name an imaginary friend. But anyway, stellar wind. This is what Edward Snowden revealed later. In a form. Its sort of the fine print. This is kind of surveillance boring. This is the stop. This is why its not easy. So one of the things i did, probably a little afternoon on september 11, i know you all came along with Current Events and you know that rice and the us name and minimizing us names and unmasking us names, i usually have to spend a lot of time on the plane, i dont have to do that now. The nsa, secretary kennedy when they showed up to from or about the communication. They get your privacy. Unless of course this identity becomes critical to the intelligence. All i get in the afternoon , early afternoon of september 11, when were deciding to minimize. For communications to, communications between afghanistan and the United States of america, we get a little more liberal. We get a little more leaning forward and pushing us identity names , its always judgment. And nsa is notoriously selfserving in not putting the american name in there in the first place. We got 20,000 dead countrymen, and my enemy headquarters is in that other country. And they are communicating here to the us, so lean a little more forward. I didnt say expose all and youre making that value judgment, there over here rather than back herethough i as george said, i told him i called the committee. George point, the Committee Said church bike forum, i called and said im doing it a little different here. Im happy to come down and talk to you, the senate and i said your grades, the households explain it and i did and it was fine but i told george, so george in his morning update to president and Vice President , Vice President cheney, he goes in there and says im doing this, doing this, pretty soon after around 11 and what did george tells the story, he then says yes, one more thing. Mike hayden, hes going to jail. So again, going to limit the church bike, great concern and the president goes weve only got monday, will bail him out. And the president says whats he doing there and george said it has to do with us names. Hes fine but i want to let you know hes leaning forward to. And the president bush then says good, anything else he could be doing . George goes ill ask. So we goes back to langley, called me up and goes im president , Vice President going to jail, so on and so forth and the president then said is there anything more you could be doing . And i said george, no, not with in my current authorities. I paused and he goes not exactly what i asked, is it . Is there more you could do . If you had the authority . Ill get back to you. We hold up, for me, it was our lawyers and off sky. If we had the authority, what more can we do and we came up with broadly even three baskets of stock. And we developed it, i talked to george about it and about four days later on in the oval office. And well mister president , if we had the authority we would do these things. Im not going to into specifics but theres fine print in the book about what the three were. In essence, what happened on 9 11, pre9 11. We americans were trying to have to things in full measure. That life doesnt let you get. In full measure, liberty, security, privacy. And were trying to, in one of our techniques, one of our techniques was we have these big powerful intel guys with one church, hyperventilating about. And intel over here, really substantial stories, look out. Intel foreign. Law enforcement, over here. Domestic, much more limited. So thats foreign, intel, ethics, conflict. So those 19 guys come from, right here . Writing that quest. But the challenge was now how do we close the gap that they created consciously . As a way to ensure we would ever reach these agencies wouldnt do what they were intended to do. So the Stellar Wind Program with the baskets, three baskets of things that would make it , make us more capable of protecting a foreign enemy who maybe physically in the United States or at least whose communications would be in the United States. And we put those three things together, we improved it. I briefed congress on it about threeweeks after that, a small number. We briefed the fisa court on it, what did in congress right before the end of october, briefed the fisa port by january and it went forward. Theres a lot of the book, its turbulence, we argue with ourselves and i get all of that. Ill stop this chapter by simply saying and when, there were changes to it and the laws that changed to make it easier but when senator barack obama had run to become president of the United States on a platform that im not george bush, and he was briefed on the program that existed at the end of the Bush Administration said all i had full. It was president obamas version of this program that snowden then made public. So my sense in that church pipe, are you doing this right, are you sure youre not abusing this, you had to president who were fundamentally as different as those two fundamentally saying no, this is the right balance and we probably had it right. One of the things that struck me from the book was that when you were looking at the information about who called who when, for how long, basically the information that you gathered from the phone bills of americans whether they subscribe to t mobile or some other, one of the things you did not do was apply the kind of algorithm and data mining that you could to find patterns in those phone bills of many large numbers of people. And to me, thats amazing as it indicates that the nsa was way behind google because adsense does that me all the time. I keep these so i look on the web for beekeeping stuff and next time i read the new york times, theres the beekeeping ads, they knew. Why werent you doing that . What steve is referring to is one of the baskets, the one that became publicly known is the 15 program because i get it on raw president ial authority, Congress Later passed a law in 215 of the law, its in essence that Metadata Program , call a, call b at that time for that month, its on the mentally the phone bill is what is least supposed to look like. Young folks, they dont charge by the call anymore but you know what i mean so the company kept those records to get your money. And on october 2 when i got this permission from the president i went to the governor and said give me that stuff and they did. So we built up a massive database simply call. No physically impossible to get contacts, you cant put an alligator clip on your phone bill and get the content of a call so the its trillions over time of calls. Within the United States or from the United States and what we did which by the way, that could be scary. I think the crisis would have been scarier. And again, were in a different circumstance. Now the question is what are you doing with it . What we allowed ourselves to do was an example, lets assume we got this record database and we roll up a safe house in yemen and we go through the safe house and get some folks and they got whats called pocketlater , they had incriminating documentation. That looks like a very badman. And this is probably a very bad call and i wonder if this phone has ever been in contact with the american homeland. Remember, how do we defend against a foreign attack, communications or whose actors might be in america so what we might do and it sounds like a cartoon but is what we would do, we walk up to the doorway of that good jillion record phone base and say hey, someone in here, is this your phone . And if the algorithm then would search rapidly and it would get some phone in the bronx and it would say i talked to that phone every thursday. Because we have the database we can say who do you talk to . And im done, thats it. Thats all we ever did with that. Stevens referring to something different, saying you can do a lot more with that data. I was telling him before we came here, i was out of government and that was after snowden and the 2015 programs and a lot of people who thought what are they doing . I was on a panel with Keith Alexander and a couple other folks and eric schmidt from google. And so were talking about this and eric, hes helping that guy guess, he comes out and says that metadata is very powerful, you could use metadata and start handling off how google uses metadata. You could launch algorithms, you could divine patterns, predict behavior. And on and on. And hal and i wait till hes done and go eric is right, we dont do any of that but hes right. In other words, we dont do to the data that American Business does to similar data. It could, it actually could yield useful information but remember, were back here in the game of how much is enough, how much are you comfortable with . How much of your privacy and liberty you want to give up for another pound of safety and although you all are free to let google do it unless it violates your privacy, im sorry, google cant put you in jail. American government can. And therefore we are quite comfortable that no, weve got this narrow need, thats a useful tool. We will use it for that. We never even to try to do that. It really starts in an interesting way. So its a narrative its the only part of the memoir that looks like a dialogue were not talking about time or place or date or even who the actors are. But it goes, are you sure theyre there . The one who will macthe decision asks . Yes, sir. Youre sure its them . Weve got good human intelligence, we have one tracking with streaming video, the predator. The nsa stuff is checking in now and confirming its them. Theyre there. How long have are you had capture of the target . And who else is around . How long you been takingad pictured of the compound. A couple hours. The family over here in the main building, the guys we want, theyre in the big guest house here. Theyre not very far apart. No, sir. But far enough, far enough. And thats right identity outbuilding over here, small, and the past we have seen aq al qaeda in the past we have seen al qaeda people use it when they stopper were here a lot. So are they. A really dirty compound. Anyone in that little building now . Dont know. Probably not. We havent seen anyone since the pred predator we havent seen anyone sis the pred was captured of the target. What is the pk . Probability of kill. The pk on the big guesthouse look like with a gbu . Thats a gbu12, a laser identifiedded 500pound bomb. The guys dead. We think the family is okay. You think theyre okay. Remember, theyre reasonably close. They should be. We have done the bug splat. That is the irreverent reverence we have to what are the fit sicks of the bomb building this building look like, and what you come out with is a splotch of red, yellow and green, which is not consent there can because of the concentric because of the physics of the tarring and the thickness of the walls so looks like a bug splat. We have done the bug splat. But can never be sure. Structural weakness, walk out of the house or something. What it look like with a couple of hellfires in a much smaller weapon 20pound versus 500. Well, we bring them in this way. All the energy away from the family quarters, so family quarters are fine. If we hit the right room in thee guest house, well get all the bad guys but niece internal walls can be thick and if we dont hit the rightm or one is up taking a piss theres a long pause in the room. Finally the one responsible for the decision speaks. Use hellfires the way you said. And officer leaves the room, in route to the op center with the message. Theres another long pause. Tell me about these guys again . Sir, big al qaeda operators and weve been trying to track them forever, theyre really careful. Theyve been hard to find. Theyre the first team. They sure as hell have a track record, involved in the plotting. Another pause. Use the gbu. And another more senior operator says at some small building used as a dorm . After the gbu hits if military aides come out, kill them. Yes, sir. Less than an hour later thelessa decisionmaker is briefed again. Sir, two targets are dead. There was in damage to the family quarters about they all left the compound and were pretty upset, left quick. No effort to see if there were any survivors in the getz house. No one came out of the small building. We didnt hit it. Thanks. That is thank the burden that te people who operate on your behalf accept in order to make the kinds of decisions that they hope and pray reflect your values. They are represented not just as defending you, they are representing you. So the line i use when people talk about the folks who make these kind of decisions is dont think of them is a alien beings they went to school with you, went to church with you and if you live here, you probably know a lot of them and they dont have a different value system. On they are required, however to apply our common values in circumstances you will nevernd r identifies and not likely learn about. Thats why i wrote that way. Trying to ratchet it up here going through thing wed concern all of us. Hr we start with surveillance of phone metadata. We passed over internet and content surveillance, and im sure it will come up in question and answer. Then theres also targeted killing which we just touched on. Hope that comes up again. But you talked chapters about enhanced interrogation of phrase i despise. I understand the importance you. Describe how you revised practices to rule out certain methods, et cetera. Yeah, so, getting the imprecision i got my fingerprints on every Controversial Program we have had since 9 11. Pretty much. Yeah. Thats why the book. So, i started the surveillance program. That chapter i just read the beginning to . Talked about how cia pushed president bush to ratchet up the targeted killing program dramatically in 2008, and againt the change in administration, the new administration put it arm around that program as well and went forward. So i started the surveillance program. I certainly tried to amplify the targeted killing program. I inherited the program that city general just talked about. Renditions, interrogation and detentions. The cia black stuff. And i came to cia in may of 2006 and this program was the 600pound quadruped in me middle of the room. We had to do something about the program. Sorry spent the summer of 06 trying to learn about it. By august i was prepared to start with steve hadley, the National Security adviser, up to the Vice President and the president. Have to make changes. This is not my being judgmental about what my pred are predecess had done. They had their circumstances, had mind. By 2006 we had more penetrations of al qaeda, knew more about the organization, and most importantly, we had a pretty good sense of the threat level, what what they could do to us stop extreme measures that, frankly, i agree were justified earlier, were no longer as required, and, therefore, for both reasons of ethics and frankly for operational reasons we could pull back a bit on what had been an extremely aggressive program. At so i went to the president and said, i dont want to close thee black sites but die want to empty them. I want to keep them open because i figure i may have to put some people in there, and i did. Put a couple in later. But mr. President were not jail erredful were your intel services. El servi we senate be keeping people forever. And although i cant claim the intel value of everyone we still have is zero, there are other factors now that are probably more important than whatever residual intel value is left. So i want to empty the sites. Keep them open but empty them. We got to tell a whole bunch more people in congress what were doing. We met the law. A george actually briefed what is call the gang of eight, the is the chair and ranking of the committees. By the way to give you a sense, when george started it, he started it in august of 02, congress was out of town. They didnt come back until september. George sends his folks down brief. The on what we freely admit is a very aggressive program. So george is kind of, pins and needles. What is Congress Going to think . And he sends his team down. They brief the gang of eight. The team comes back and. Up to the eighth deck at langley. George is kind of all agog. How did it go . And the First Response was, you wont believe it. The way george tells the story his heart sank. You wont believe it. The only question we got was, are you sure thats enough . Is walt we got from the congressmen. So its not this is not pipe s nightmare or churchs night mother night mary of an agency that was renegade. We can argue whether that was bad or good idea but there other people in the circle. Told the president we want to coop the sites hope and we need to tell more people in congress. You need to make it public and ought to give a speech, and the 13 techniques we had, including waterboarding, we can probably slice them down to about six or seven. Slth and the end of the day we got it to six. Now, probably burn in purgatory for this based on my catholic upbringing but four of the six i retained i will swear to you i had been subjected to by the sisterss of america in catholic grade school. People agreeing there. Yes. And i dont mean to make light of it, but four of the six were grabbing them by the lapel, by the chin, slapping them in the face, or slapping them with the back of the hand in the stomach. But all cards up, the other two were tough. One was a liquid diet, liquid ensure, 1400 calories a day. Im seeing a face over here. Yeah. This is probably not part of an ad campaign for ensure . We were one of the enhanced interrogation techniques. Carefully monitored but liquid diet. And the other was actually sleep dee deprivation. 96 hours, and the idea was not to punish anybody. The idea was to get someone we thought had lifesaving information out of a zone of defiance, into a zone of cooperation. We talk about this a minute before we came in, steve. We wanted to establish psychological domination over this person in order to learn what that person had. Later in the last president ial campaign, one of the candidates, now president , said that we raul waterboarding and a lot more because they deserve it and that is incredibly offputting for folks who actually had any hand in this. We didnt do any of this because the deserved it. We did because it was absolutely essential, we believed, to keep americans alive, and were going to do waterboarding and a lot more because they deserve its reflects a degree of enthusiasm for it. We were never enthusiastic for it. This was always done with regret. This is not something that george tenet had in his righthand desk drawer saying i hope we can use that program we developed. I need push back. First off, on the record, key school does not do any of this. This is not like st. Petersburg. But second, since when i talkedo to the midshipman about this, we sometimes talk about israel aswe another democracy, even more beset be terrorism than the u. S. , and theres a case study that is entirely factual, ive worked on it carefully and sorted is sourced is carefully and describes what happened when the israeli head of the their secret police was trying to make to defend the israeli people against the real danger of bombs and so on. So the head of the secret polica called a press conference. If id can not be revealed in print, much less call a press conference but he invited the families of people who had been killed aboard a bus by a bomb to apologize to those families and to say, i had in custody custod2 hours before the event the person who built that bomb. And then he said, its my fault. I should have questioned him more forcefully, but the rope i the reason i didnt and the reason i didnt is because pointing to that man, the attorney general and pinning it on the attorney general the fact that they law constrained him. Now, the law in israel was much more publicly arrived at than the standards that general hayden had to abide by. Those were priced of brief discussions with the office of Legal Counsel where the a perso authorization was from a meeting where two people were in attendance, Vice President cheney, and in israel it was different. There will hearings and theyve got a justice named landau, who is rather a grand figure in the history of israel. The one who tried eichman, the architect of the final solutionu was kidnapped in argentina and brought back to israel and tried and hanged. What landau said very clearly was well have one technique. Well call it tilt killing, thee same word for rocking a cradle in hebrew. You can rock a person, you can shake them, not but the lapels because thats too much whiplash and you can hold their showereds and the only time you can do this is when you have a suspect in custody and you have a moral certainty the person has the information you need and a moral certainty that there is a bomb plot underway. Its a ticking bomb. Very rare event. So you can interrupt the ticking bomb and save lives. The only time you enhance your techniques is at war. And then in the question and answer that followed, the up believably for a map so trained in the keeping of information,n, was asked, whats this . Dont we hear that somebody a palestinian who is in custody and subjected to this tilting actually died of it . Was shaken so severely thately t they he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and died like a shaken baby . We have used it 8,000 cases and only had one death. And everybody said, 8,000 . 8,000 ticking bombs . 8,000 ticking bomb cases . Thats more episodes than there are of 24, the tv show. Thats not real world. And when it came out after further inquiry, they had actually employed it 20,000wh times, and about eight people had died. So, what im trying to say ism not that what im trying to say is that any organization is made of humans, and even the most professional the israeliser serious professionals under sear your supervision of an attorney general who made him very uncomfortable, after a very public debate, from a very responsible justice, a lot of those elements were missing in our procedure, even then, 20,000 times and they werent actually doing this to gather information. They were kind of processing people who were guilty of being palestinian and bearded and of military age before they shook them they would keep for 17 days and put them in very small boxes and chilling them and sweating them and leaving them in their own filth and subjecting them to loud music and keeping them from so by the tomb they finally shook them the people were seriously bron down, enough so they piling flop like a doll. This happened in israel and the reason it didnt happen in the u. S. Is well i can well, not just me. But i began with the premise of talking about these thing that w these people in here are not alien beings. They reflect your values and have to applier values in very difficult circumstances. The kind that you never face. So, let me try to give you the comparable scale inside the cia program. Depending on how you count its not look we lost anybody. Its how you book them, detainee or just temporary transit as you move them to another country. The number of cia folks were talking about here cia detainees between 100 and 120. Lets go with the bigger number, 120. Not 8,000 or 20,000. 120. Of the 120, fewer than a third had ever had any techniques used against them. So the number were talking about is probably 35. No one gets into this program unless we had reason to believe that they were what we call hbte high value target, or hbd. High value detainee. Just not part of the roundup, and i dont know has muff of the Israeli Program as you do but looked like the program went like this. The longer it went on. This program went like that. So it began, for example, with a bunch of battlefield captures in afghanistan where the agency was so ill prepared and performed so badly that director tenet said we have get our act together. We have to get pick techniques, ones approved by the attorney general in the conversation you said so the Program Guess from kind of county option under the stress of combat to, no, no, no, theres a list of things and only people who have been authorized to do these things good to do those things and we went from a universe of 13 techniques to a universe of six techniques. We went from a universe in which eight members of congress knew, to all members of both intelligence committees knew. We went from a universe in which detention was indefinite to a universe in which i was keeping people 60 days. It was in 60day increments rather than just indefinite detention, and to be even more president obama is given credit for ending the program,e and honest many can differ and we can talk about that afterwards of you like, but hes also given credit for stopping waterboarding. He didnt. George bush did. In two he took it off the table, which i the hashest of the techniques and the total number of people who waterboardded is three. The last person waterboardded was in march of 2003. And so i get it that when you do thinks in secret, do even good people under stress, the wheels can start to fly off, and you talk to some members of the senate, they will say they did, but die think an awful lot of folks at cia believed that this didnt go this way. That it actually went that way and got more disciplined and more constricted, the more safe we felt we could make folks. If youre asking for a mistake, all right . Its kind of the level of process and politics. If youre asking me to revisit this and say, what you have done differently . I would have briefed more people in congress about more stuff, more early. All right . What happened was we briefed a very small number and then when it this always becomes public. When it became public, you had an awful lot of beating of breaths and representing of garments. Rending of garments. Going to sound harsh but its not unfair. My sense is, we then give members of the other Political Branch a bit of a hall pass that they can go ahead and either have real orphaned moral outrage once we have made everybody feel safe again but spare the rickty of the decision when everyone the difficulty of the decision when everyone is scared0. So pri proof which i think is constitutional and consistent with frank church and smart. Go in there early, tell them what youre doing. And in a sense, dare them to tell you not do toe doit. When not to do it when the future is up certain and everyone has good reason to be afraid. I was struck that in the book you described in speaking to the nsa people that they just two days after september 11 attacks, less than 48 hours, their job will be, we will preserve american liberty and well do it by making americans feel safe again. Yep. S i like you put well preserve american liberty first and you implied in the second half, well do it by making americans feel safe again. When americans dont feel safe they want more protection, they care less about liberty. Thing thank you. Thats a very important point. Want to emin size because it threads through the book. We dont view yourselves as just protecting your safety. We actually think what it is were doing is protecting americas way of life. Frighten el people dont make good democrat order smart republicans, small d, small r. They dont mind gnawing on theim neighbors liberties and privates. T get good and scared, start gnawing on their own and so one of the reasons we did push back playing to the edge, right . Not unlawful but using everything that law and policy said we could do and using it pretty aggressively, was not just that it kept you safe, but, frankly, we knew if we failed again, itself we had a secondwaa 9 11, if some of you have gas about the patriot act, feel concerned about renditions,ne nervous about surveillance, i cant mam what we would have done collectively if we had a second catastrophic fall failure so one of the items itef conscience we had, if the decisions were inside he line and actually made a difference you need both. Your almost dutybound to do the. Bo told i had two detainees and a used efforts against him. He knew where senior al qaeda folks were living elm couldnt talk. Remember sitting there with the order, catholic grade school, human dignity, with the order, saying, do i want to subject another human being to enhanced interrogation. It was sleep deprivation that was the real thing i was authorizing. Now i wish for all the world that somebody else had to make that decision. I couldnt do vie thrown my personal conscience but in addition to my personal conscience i carried yours. Or at least i carried your wellbeing. And so i might wish i didnt have to make that decision, a power higher than mitt, public your choice, 43 until president of the United States or high are power than that put me in that position to make that decision, and i could not make it indifferent to your safety. Ul and i pick up the pen and i signed it. And i wasnt sure what that would mean to me or for me as a human being for the rest of my life. I tell the story in the book, the phone would ring in the middle of the night and i knew i would make a decision, and i literally would say, with i picked up the phone, hayden, think this one through. Whatever you decide on that phone call youre going to live with for the rest of your life and that is not an absolute invitation to be overly cautious. In because if you make two measure overly cautious decisions and something bad happens, you have really, really have to live with that. So, im sorry. Too many first person singular pronouns. Im trying to describe what these people do on your behalf. And they totally agree, with somebody who said, i dont think i want you doing that. Thats fine. Thats an honest argue; we went to different high schools together so to speak. We share values. But that should in no way lead to demonizing of the folks who took on these additional responsibilities. Nor should it allow these folks to demonize those who say i dont want you doing it. We have half hour left. You must have a lot of questions and we have a make crow phone right in the middle of the room there. If you want to move to theou lik microphone. Yes. General, my name is mark harp are. I went to catholic grad school and im familiar with at least six of those methods, and some of them are more effective when used in combination. The holding ear while slap it very effective but it worked and we have done pretty well. My question is, based on your experience, what you can tell us after 9 11, with some of the methods that have changed,anged before can you tell us anything has been prevented that might have otherwise happened . Sure. What this program delivered . This was the single greatest provider of information about al qaeda we had. Now, over time, we had fewer detainees, the one we had were aging off, less current information and we had more penetrations and learning things. 9 11 commission report, after 9 11, you had that they came out and in 2004. 25 of the footnotes in the report are from a bit masked but from the cia detention program. I will simply repeat what Barack Obamas cia says, there was information from this program that contributed to our getting to abada bad. That wasnt as tightly knit as you would have gleaned if you watched zero dark 30 but there was connective tissue between the two. I talked to an interrogator of the first detainee and she she says there is still isnt a week that doesnt good by that she doesnt wish we still had control over these number of people to go back to them with a question and that was the beauty of the program. You can keep going back again and again and play them off against one another. We didnt turn any of these people into boy scoutsment and didnt say where to get my vase to become an american but they moved from a zone ototeat defiance to one where we could work with them and then play off one against the other. By the way, the most effective technique we had, bar none, in t every case, was our knowledge. What put them most off balance was so what were you doing flat hotel in you kuala lampur on the third. Again, i have to say this. Can still with the argue. I get it. Extent dont want you doing it. Thats an honorable position and one that people like me have to deeply respect. What has happened, because this has become so controversial, we have made it so politically dangerous and legally challenging to detain that we dont. We kill. Since i left government i probably got more fingers on this hand than people that weng have actually detained out ofq. Battle fields like iraq anda. If you talk to the folks in president Obamas Administration theyll tell you, no, no, no, we would capture but the historical record is bureaucracy im talking to million with experience in government. Federal bureaucracies if you magazine something politically taken your or legal he challenging water starts running in this direction rather than that direction. So, what we have done, because of the frankly because of the great controversy of this and which steve has brought up, very real and serious issues, as nation we just have kind ofoverr gotten too skittish were over here pulling the trigger, which is not amoral but doesnt create el intense. I appreciate your public statements and michael steven, as a peaceful parent, maybe enhanced interrogation might help with the homework. Seriously thats them on us. I would ask about the privacy advocates but a working in Television Production and you have the give, the white house, state department, whichever, you have to give up a certain amount of information to do that. In the same way americans want a lot of conveniences, and so we set up you cant have them and have the security that you need at the same time having freedoms without people being able to see things. My question to you is, i kind of feel like its a bit of a myth, honestly, being able to not have be able to have this complete privacy as much we want to have it sometimes but i wonder if you could expound on that. I if you elect the people you want to share you value, just trust the system. Thank you. Its a great question. So, when Something Like this becomes news, i already told you where i was born and raised four hours town the turn pike and the guys in the Old Neighborhood like me enough. Theyre like, hey, mikey, you listen to all my phone called awe you want, go right ahead and i my answer is, thats not a useful attitude. That is not what we do. Not what and so we had all your phone bills and we could have algorithmed them. But we dont. We didnt. A lot of of americans just simply in the current distrust of government, dont want to trust the government if you your phone bills and changed the law last summer and now nsa doesnt keep the phone bills. Phone Companies Keep them. You can still get them but theyre not keeping them. For us in the business we do observe the rules and minimize and protect u. S. Privacy and dont unmask your name unless aessential. The argument im not ashamed of what ive done, thanks but doesnt ant the church question. Doesnt answer the constitutional questions. Were all americans. The dna says distrust government. Thats we had that ideal that the guy weather wrote the constitution distrusted everybody, and so they built in a system of checks and balances so that government so you did not have to depend on government good will for your liberties and remain relatively safe. One of the Reasons Church was so exigent is that he had just had a refresher course from the founders and he had seen a president just forced out of office who had actually made enemies lists and gone after them by breaking into their psychiatrists ofs in academy elsburgs case to get damaging information to discredit hill. Problem with that in those days you had to have a black bag team to bang into the psychiatrists office. Now with the wonderful tools developed, nobody would have to do that. Think any clever cyber major the Naval Academy could find my medical records, my most personal emails with my life and i feel vulnerable and cant have that must we all feel vulnerable. So, church is reflecting a political culture and a political history for the west. All the western democracies. In which all of our culture attitudes to protect our privacy have been honed in an environment in which the only real threat to our privacy came from our government. We dont live there anymore. The most serious threats to your privacy, the institutions that most frequently impinge upon your privacy, is not your government. The government was popping upper ads about its not. Its the commercial entity that is productizing your choices for commercial profit. And so if you really want to get to the heart of the privacy question we have to not only continue to defend of uses against government intrusion and now suddenly realize, if were giving up privacy itchings its not to the government. Its to different institutions. All 0 our cultural hand designed to defend against this and thats not the engine that is squeezing your permanent personal data. General hayden. Im about a fifth of the way into playing to the edge and i im seeing that the decisionmaking process sounds interesting. Could you say how you use input from historians and case studies like we heard about in your decisionmaking process and if you can say, how others Senior Leaders get that kind of input . O thank you. Thank you. Ive got ba and mna history which makes me odd run thing National Security agency. But i am i bring to the job who i am, and i do personallyob see things through historical lenses. I actually think i tell this story in the book but im going repeat it, if i dont youll hear it here. Im there watching a briefing in europe in 1993 94. War in bosnia, the yugoslavia disintegrating. What we thought was a comfortable civilization now goes medieval on us, and so i have a navy lieutenant, briefing a four are stash. Im a brig adeer. Just on the fighting in boss knea. Theres fighting in a little town south of sarajevo, and he is saying, sir, a lot of fighting on, points to it on the map and the general says, who is up sneer who is fighting. The said, sir, its the muslims and the serbs were cleansed a long time ago theyre go. You on the fencesive. Creates gentlemen then says, is that a good defensible line . Yes, sir. The banks to river drop off 10, 15meters in the center of town. Its a really good line to hold. Okay, thanks, son. But thats not why theyll stop there. Oh, really . Because in the great system of krisendom in 201554 the dividing line between catholicism and the christianity was the river. The croats are catholics. Could have killed the lieutenant, what a great response. We americans very often dont see things in that deep historical context. So we go into places without an appreciation for the story. Our tendency otherwise roll up our sleeps which the rest over the world thanks us back were hard working. We roll up our sleeves and say whats the problem, whether better question is whats the story. So a spend of lot of time in the nsa and the cia job, trying to fund the understand the history of the target so i would have a richer view to share with the intelligence client. I tell one story in the book that after the failure of the iraq wmd, National Intelligence estimate . We got it all wrong . We had a Senior Executive seminar that we were running, and the historians had actually come up with a really,al good case study, in which the Senior Executives role played the gulf of tonkin incident. In which in fact nsa almost certainly misread some intercepts. There was incident one happened. Incident two didnt. S but we misreading an honest mistake a very tough job misreading what we were intercepting from the vietnamese, we throughout there was a Second Attack underway. It was the Second Attack that created created the gulf of tonkin resolution and the authorization for war. That that didnt create the were but just the Bumper Sticker for the war and helped get to us war. They want to use this very controversial and edgy there was role playing involve in the Senior Executive class and sent me a note saying, can we do this . Is it okay . Because they were fearful it would pull forward into pull backward into the class, the iraq nie and that people would i dont know use the gulf of tonkin thing as a metaphor for the iraq nie thing. Said, no. Do it. Its real. It happened. Well learn from our history and if theres any carom shot well live with it. Who i am my academic background i depend a lot on history. Hi, general hayden. Thank you for camming to key school. My question i have two questions. One is how do you personally feel as a u. S. Citizen about the fact that congress voted that your browser history could basically be sold and i could buy that as a journalist and do what i want with it . Na and then the cemented question is, fastfording to two nights ago our military struck in syria and as from my civilian point of view, it seemed like a sort of a mask that didnt seem like it did a lot of good, although i saw you comment you thought it was a good airstrike. So, eye like you to competent on that as well and also wouldnt the 100 million be better spent in humanitarian aide in syria. Im with you on the internet browsing thing. Its not the government that scares me. Its the private sector in terms of giving up approaches was okay with the strike. If you see me on tv im not a big fan of some things currently going on but i thing that was reich chews anger on the part righteous anger on the part of the president and moral judgment and theyre a second and Third Order Effects that are probably positive by conducting the strike and just at a technical level, it was awesome. 59tlambed hitting right w where they want to hit. Minimum that collateral damagesi and mineral loss of life. The reason i thought it was more than just a symbolic slap, is that the reality what i saysl lanight who you heard on Anderson Cooper theres actually a pretty delicate night military equilibrium right now t between assad and the opposition. Who has the upper hand because he has the Russian Air Force flying a the Syrian Arab Air force and iranians fight fighting with them and its a delicate balance. We just proved we can ruin your balance here 15 months ago he was going down, and so this was a regime survival question. He has an equilibrium noun. Taken aleppo, feeling good. That strike just remind him that we can actually take the tools of war away from him with pretty much inputin and put him back impugnty. And but him back where is, it was just symbol pick but a lesson youre in a more precarious position than you think and we can tilt this. To thely agree. What dont understand i wrote this,say it on tv, how can you have compassion over a baby writhing under sarin gas and not have compassion over a threeyearold washing up onshore in turkey. [applause] i say in the article, we let 10,000 Syrian Refugees come into the country last year. T 10 85 of. ,000 the were women and children and the investigate time for al of them was 18 to 24 months. Ee dont understand. What i fully admit was general win compassion here. Why cannot that be extended to these other things . Good afternoon. I have two questions. Number one, what compelled you to write this book, and number two, since the nsa and cia operate under secrecy, where does the news media get its information . So, to answer the first question, what compelled me to write this book. My wife. Ahha. And i always thought i wanted to but this comes late. I didnt write this going out the door. This is published seven and a half years after i left government. So i left the stuff kind of percolate for a long time before i started to write. So that was that. Theres constant and my wifer wanted me to write it for the grandkids because we played to the edge. This is controversial. Theyre going read about grandad. Heres the we granddad thought about and now they have it. Regard to the news entity, this is a constant permanent tension, built into the document, all right . Just like the congress has texas with the executive secrecy has tenth with the first amendment. And so we each have an appropriate role to play. When my Public Affair guys would run into the office with thepl hair on fire, he said i dont believe the story they got out in. Call the editor. I would call the editor and say, thank you for taking the call. This is mike hayden the cia. C i dontly understand we both have a responsibility for American Safety and liberty. But i fear the way youre about to carry out your responsibilitt is going to make it morehe difficult for me to carry out mine. Can we talk . And we would have a conversation, and to a degree that surprised most people, thats friend live conversation, and we generally get results. Now, we dont often get, oh, okay,ll rip it up. But there are modifications to the star or delays to the storyt occasionally agreements we wont go with this based on what you told me but if anybody else got it we will and if anybody else comes sniffing around you have to tell us. And if they do, we do. And they print the story. So you have this continuous negotiation in which were trying to minimize and theyre trying to maximize. Thats as good as its ever going to get. Its just the necessary tension. I watch you often on morning joe. Thank you. But comes back to what seven soar steven said earlier that church was trying to describe. W one of the oversight mechanisms is a Free Press Even when theyre saying things that should legitimately remain secret. Im afraid that has to be the last question as having been signaled by the production team. [applause] i do recommend just the strongest terms, fascinating chapters on each of the subject that we have discussed and truly we have not covered 20 of what is in the book. I also wanted to give thes general a gift. The gift itself is trivial. A tiny little book, almost a handbook but the book is not trivial at all. Its by timothy snyder, who some of you may know, 20th century historian at yale, and really kind of the ornament of the history department. He has written on the history of the 20th century, and his first very wellknown book was called blood lands the grim history of the lands between stalin and hitler, which was a crushing place to be. Its what ukraine and other it countries suffered. He has another book called black earth which is equally grim about blood and land. The same part of the world, same time. His book enough is called on tyranny 20 lessons from the 20th century which he wrote rapidly and is givele away. Recommend it to all of you. What he does is list 20 things you can do if you feel that it might be possible that what church was warning against, if an awer to tarean did arrived authoritarian arriveds, contribute to good causes, turn off your screen, read books, talk to each other, go out in public, build things, but a very good book and i know that general hayden i want to just add, one of my proudest moments as an mesh e american intelligence officers, the brightest instance of american espionage occurred two weeks ago when the head of the federal police force, the fbi guy, jim comey and he head of the nations largest intelligencers, mike rogers, stood there in open session and honestly answered questions that contradicted statements by the chief executive. That they were asked, that they were asked in open session, and that they answered in open session, only in america. [applause] hoarse a look at authors recently feed tour on after words the women were so hell bent on getting a woman elected president. So fed up with the men. They were going do it any way they could and men played dirty and the women were perfectly happy to play dirty as well. And then Ellen Johnson they found the perfecting seem for that. Somebody with no qualms at slinging dirt that the men slung at her that were dirtier dirt. So supporters bribed guys to give them the voter i. D. Cards so when the men showed up they wouldnt be able to vote. All the young boys were vote going their Football Player, a lot of them their mom stole their voter i. D. Cards. Two round. The first round and second round and young men didnt realize they would need their voter i. D. Card after the first round to vote in the second round so the what about the beer. They were d women were parked at bars up and down the highway, saying give me your card for a cold beer, give me a your card for this, and they did the polls there are women who pass the same baby around to different womens because if you were a measuring nature wow could cut to the front of the the tenhour lines and vote in from so they pass the same baby around. All sorts of sneaky things and then this great they dug up this video that a Football Player head back when he was playing in italy, where the italian soccer team, ac milosevic lan in which he appears in a commercial buck nicked infront of white women. They unearth it this video, 14 years old and produced it, dropped down in the middle of liberian political scene, and liberia has this weird mix of bible spouting puritanism and deep racial anxieties and have thing video show up just got the women mad because they saw this as rejection of black women, and liberian man were jealous and it was a loser there was a lot of stuff they did to get Ellen Johnson elected. After words airs every saturday at 10 00 p. M. And sunday at 9 00 p. M. Eastern. You can watch all previous after words programs on our web site, booktv. Org. So, about seven years ago, i wrote my first book and i was so excited. I spent all this time thinking about the title, and the title i came up with was what is health . It was a key quit. Was it how you look, how you feel, how how long you live . How well you live . What was health . Oh due you optimize on a parameter when you dont have a parameter on which to opt sunrise so i sent ito publisher and a week later the publisher called and said, david, steve jobs just called and changed the title of your book. Said he did what . And i called up steve and i said, what are you doing some and he goes, david, you cant put the word health in the title. As soon as possible you say health peoples eyes glaze over. Its like chewing cardboard. When you say health, people think of brussel sprouts. He said you need something optimistic. Declarative and he came up with the title the end of illness. This the quote from mark twain, the only way to keep your health is what whatot dont was drink walt you dont like, and 0 do what youd rather not. I will show you today thats not the case. Im going to offend some of you. Im going to take away things you have been leaning on and show you theres very little data behind. The im going to push you. But these are my opinions arent my opinions, these are data and i arell show you the data about the things we do and where we should go, going forward. So, our country is about being bigger and better. So if i take a sevenyearold and give him a shot of governor hormonening a month laters friends will say you look ten years younger. It works. Makes you look better, feel a little bit better. On average, it takes 16 years off your life but you look better today. So the question is, whatter is your metric . Do you want to look good today or do you want to play with your grandchildren tomorrow . Theres a population in ecuador that are start in stature, and they eave mutation and a growth hormone receptor, almost no cancer and no diabetes in that population, yet we try to be bigger. And so the key thing is, naive of you what you want your goal to be. The other big topic is things like testosterone. We head on the radio every day ads for lt. The in the largest study done looking at people with low lt, giving the tesss toker to reason and there was in increase in muscle mass or libido but dramatic increase in cardiovascular events and death. By the way, death is a bad side effect for a drug. So i again i challenge you is whenever you do something andthats the resounding message over and over ask why and say where is the dat in what were doing some testosterone for low t, there were over 200 million prescriptions written last year for it. You can watch this and pams jim at booktv. Org. Tonight we have andrea hegar with her book shoot like a girl detailing he time in afghanistan. [cheering] and her fight to eliminate the militarys Ground Combat policies. She now live nears austin with her family and works as an executive coach and consultant and gives back to her alma mater by mentoring cadets and guest lecturing at the university of texas. She continues to speck about her experienced military and fight