Michael Hayden Quotes

The skills of the British intelligence community are a great national asset.

Intelligence collection has its place—no question—… But no matter how important collection is, in the short and even the long run, it just doesn’t cost very much.

One of my own guiding principles in intelligence work was ... not to make a mystery of what is a matter of common knowledge or obvious to friend and foe alike.

Intelligence without counter-intelligence is useless.

It [the CIA] was not intended as a Cloak & Dagger Outfit. It was intended merely as a center for keeping the President of what was going on in the World…I never wanted the CIA to act as a spy organization. That was never the intention when it was organized.

The intelligence community is built, resourced, designed, trained, and focused around secrecy. We try to obtain the secrets of our adversaries and we try and keep secret how we are doing so.

Our foreign intelligence was little more than what a military attache could learn at dinner.

The dirty little secret of the intelligence world is that much of what you really need to know isn't exactly a secret anyway.

The members of the National Clandestine Service of the CIA are called the collectors of last resort. They are tasked to seek the truth when all other avenues of intelligence collection have failed.

The men and women of the CIA are a national treasure.

I've had nothing to do with the intelligence world since I left it, in any shade or variety.

When I was younger, I actually wanted to be a CIA agent. Really. I even did the online questionnaire.

I think all governments engage in intelligence gathering vis-a-vis other governments.

For some, the very act of intelligence gathering seems illegitimate when applied to the crime of terrorism.

Spying is a like a game of chess: Sometimes you have to withdraw, sometimes you have to sacrifice one of your pieces to win - preferably a knight rather than a king or queen.

I wasn't a spy. I'd have been spotted in five seconds. Yes, I was in intelligence, but that covered a multitude of things.

I was an intelligence officer, not a policy-maker.

In my professional work with the Agency, by the late '70s, I had come to question the value of a great deal of what we were doing, in terms of the intelligence agency's impact on American policy.

I suddenly realized at the CIA that I had to make life-and-death decisions about people.

By the late '70s I had come to question the point of a great deal of what we were doing, in terms of the CIA's overall charter.

Secrecy now beclouds everything about CIA—its cost, its efficiency, its successes, and its failures.

Secrecy is as essential to Intelligence as vestments to a Mass, or darkness to a spiritualist seance, and must at all costs be maintained, quite irrespective of whether or not it serves any purpose.

The purpose of an intelligence service is to avoid war, not to promote one.

The operational tail will wag the intelligence dog. The top people will be forced to take up all their time in the direction of operations and will neglect intelligence.

Secrecy now beclouds everything about the Central Intelligence Agency—its cost, its efficiency, its success, its failures.