Intelligence

Michael Hayden: "Those Records are a Legitimate Foreign Intelligence Target"

Benjamin Wittes
Wednesday, June 17, 2015, 3:08 PM

Don't blame the Chinese for the OPM hack, says former NSA and CIA Director Michael Hayden. If Hayden had had the ability to get the equivalent Chinese records when running CIA or NSA, he says, "I would not have thought twice. I would not have asked permission. I'd have launched the star fleet. And we'd have brought those suckers home at the speed of light." The episode, he says, "is not shame on China.

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Don't blame the Chinese for the OPM hack, says former NSA and CIA Director Michael Hayden. If Hayden had had the ability to get the equivalent Chinese records when running CIA or NSA, he says, "I would not have thought twice. I would not have asked permission. I'd have launched the star fleet. And we'd have brought those suckers home at the speed of light." The episode, he says, "is not shame on China. This is shame on us for not protecting that kind of information." The episode is "a tremendously big deal, and my deepest emotion is embarassment."

I completely agree, as I said the other day.


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Benjamin Wittes is editor in chief of Lawfare and a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is the author of several books.

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