Former NSA and CIA Director Michael Hayden on Trump, Gitmo, Apple, and his new book


By Alex Bregman

Retired U.S. Air Force four-star general Michael Hayden, the only person to serve as the director of the National Security Agency and the CIA, spoke to Yahoo News and Finance Anchor Bianna Golodryga about the pending closing of the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the debate waging between Apple and the FBI, Donald Trump’s characterization of the war in Iraq, Hillary Clinton’s private email server, and his new book “Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror.”

On closing the detention center in Guantanamo Bay and potentially moving the detainees to United States soil, Hayden said, “One wonders, will members of what we now call the Guantanamo Bar, those who are very active in civil litigation against the current base, do they now get reenergized now that they have these people back here on the United States soil and then begin to make claims that they have even more rights than they used to have when they were sitting on the southeastern tip of Cuba?” He continued, “It’s really complicated. I’m not hugging the Guantanamo location, but our right to hold people under the laws of war as enemy combatants, I think, is unarguable, and we need to stand up for that.”

On the debate over whether or not Apple should provide the FBI access to one of the San Bernardino shooters’ iPhone’s, Hayden has sided with Apple. He told Golodryga: “I must admit, my old tribe is not unanimous on the view I’ve taken, but there are other folks like me, other former directors of the NSA who have said building in backdoors universally in Apple or other devices actually is bad for America. I think we can all agree it’s bad for American privacy. We’re arguing it’s bad for American security in terms of what adversaries will be able to do against U.S. citizens.”

On the announcement of a temporary cease-fire in the Syrian civil war, Hayden quipped: “There’s an act of faith.”

Hayden also believes the Russians have the upper hand in the region. Has the U.S. been outfoxed by Putin? Hayden said, “Oh god, yes.” He continued, “Our inaction created the opportunity for the Russians to reenter the Middle East in a powerful way for the first time since 1973 … We are a supplicant to the Iranians, Hezbollah, the Russians and the Syrians.”

Moving to presidential politics, Hayden was “outraged” after the GOP frontrunner, Donald Trump, suggested that former President George W. Bush lied in the lead-up to the war in Iraq. Hayden said, “I was outraged … I was watching the debate, and I’m lucky that flat screen survived the incident.”

The former NSA and CIA director admitted fault regarding the presence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: “We got it wrong.” He put the blame on the intelligence community, however, not on President Bush.

Hayden, who had endorsed now former candidate Jeb Bush, talked about the success of Trump’s campaign: “I think it resonates because a lot of voters, approximately one-third in each party, are very, very unhappy and very, very angry. What they’re seeing specifically in Trump, maybe a little bit in Cruz, maybe a little bit more in Sanders, is what I would call a primal scream, and right now, primal scream is what they want to exhibit.”

Hayden worried, however, about what he has been hearing, in terms of real policies, from the field of candidates: “It’s complicated stuff, and when you get up there in the debate, it is boiled down to the length of a bumper sticker, which actually does violence to the truth and frankly makes me frightened — if some candidates govern the way they have spoken during the campaign, I fear for the republic.”

Finally, on the subject of Democratic candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server, Hayden said, “I have no views on indictment. It’s a legal question, and it requires a knowledge of the law that I don’t have and a knowledge of the details that I don’t have.” He continued, “The real sin here is the original sin. It’s setting it up this way, and once you’ve set it up this way, this is going bad.”