Michael Hayden Quotes

After the heavily politicized 2007 Iran NIE, many of us in Congress found it hard to take some intelligence analysis at face value.

Ezra Klein gets under my skin. He seems to spout the party line.

What about the accusation that Hollywood is trying to advance its liberal agenda? Well, the fact is, while the creative community admittedly leans left, Hollywood has become a corporate town.

It is a common mistake these days to politicize anything and everything, including music.

A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.

[The governor] has chosen to follow political advice rather than medical advice.

I have been amazed to see how unrealistic are the bases for political opinion in general. Only rarely have I found a person who has chosen any particular political party—democratic or totalitarian—through study and comparison of principles.

Too many people in this town think about politics when they make every decision.

The trouble with our intelligence is that we have a bunch of social scientists doing the analysis when the world is dominated by fanatics.

The perception of the Supreme Court as a political court in most constitutional cases and many nonconstitutional ones derives from the fact that the justices form confident views without any empirical basis for them.

People in charge of intelligence are political as well.

The intelligence community really is a vast bureaucratic entity, and it has been politicized in ways that are not effective for the gathering of intelligence and giving it to senior policymakers.

There's an ideological belief on the left that you should not use nonpartisan tools.

Most of them are military commanders, country notables and landowners, and educated people. It is inconceivable that such a group should incline to the theory of Communism. But if Western countries persist in applying unjust pressure, they may well throw themselves into Russia’s arms.

The essence of American politics consists of the manipulation of populism by elitism.

In the wake of the Iraq war, it has become clear that official intelligence analysis was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community’s own work was politicized.

Politicization led to an intelligence output that obscured understanding of al Qaeda’s sources of strength and support.

A clearer form of politicization (of intelligence) is the inconsistent review of analysis: reports that conform to policy preferences have an easier time making it through the gauntlet of coordination and approval than ones that do not.

The intelligence community is intended to base its intelligence estimates on facts and analysis—not philosophy and conviction.

The attempt to turn a complex problem of the head into a simple moral question for the heart to answer, is of course a necessary part of all political discussion.

I'm not 100 percent anybody's ideological prism.

Party is organized opinion.

In this country there are two parties: the righteous and the fallacious

You could never write for me. You're too liberal. But you're fine for Jack.

Parties from principle, especially abstract, speculative principle, are known only to modern times, and are, perhaps, the most extraordinary and unaccountable phenomenon, that has yet appeared in human affairs.