Michael Hayden Quotes
Despite the frequent drama at the political level, America and Americans have found a comfortable center line in what it is they want their government to do and what it is that they accept their government doing. It is that practical consensus that has fostered such powerful continuity between to vastly different Presidents—George W, Bush and Barack Obama—when it comes to this conflict.
There are many who do not agree with Hayden’s thesis that there was a national consensus about the degree of compromise with Constitutional rights. It is the case that the 3 Presidents maintained a continuity, but there was no great outcry of public opinion for roundups and arrests of Muslims after 9-11. The government never at the time revealed the data on what they were doing. When that became public, it was clear that there was no consensus as was the case with torture. The military authorities who interned American Citizens of Japanese Origin argued that there was little public opposition but many citizens did not even know it was happening, and the ones who did, for the most part, thought that it was only the suspected saboteurs and spies who were interned, not American citizens who were suspected of nothing; not little children; not 90 year old men and women. When the facts were known Americans did form a national consensus—that it was one of the worst practices in which the United States ever engaged.
Michael Hayden, Air Force General, Director, CIA, Director, National Security Agency, Speech, September 7, 2012
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
While this probably was a slip of the tongue, President Bush and governor Perry both had civil right and individual had rights as a lower priority than a individual responsibility, strong growth economy or the military. There were many who really believed that the two men really thought excessive personal reedom a problem that people and the government must be protected from, like freedom for a woman to choose an abortion. For Perry in particular many thought that if this was a slip of the tounge, it was likely a Freudian slip as it what he really wants.
The first non-PRI President in over 70 years.
The George W. Bush administration started a secret program to scan phone calls of Americans without a court order or a warrant in the midst of the War on Terror. New York Times uncovered the illegal program and then the President tried to justify it.
He was the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Islamic fundamentalist terrorists are repugnant to us because they have no respect for Civil and Human Rights and would deny us what we value so highly and for which so many Americans have sacrificed. We are little better off if we surrender our civil rights in order to cope with the problem of losing our civil rights to the likes of the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
The questioned policy was that of the NSA collecting metadata on virtually all phone and other electronic communications made in or into the United States. The issue of the unconstitutionality was not then settled, with some federal courts and bodies saying Yes and other saying No.
Michael Vincent Hayden is a retired United States Air Force four-star general and former Director of the National Security Agency, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Hayden currently co-chairs the Bipartisan Policy Center's Electric Grid Cyber Security Initiative. In 2017, Hayden became a national security analyst for CNN.
