Read Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror Online
Authors: Michael V. Hayden
Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror (56 page)
World Trade Organization,
312
World War II,
3
Worthy Fights
(Panetta),
120
Wouk Herman,
175
Wyden, Ron,
183
,
184
–85,
363
,
408
–9,
419
Xi Xinping,
409
Yakima,
21
–22
Yemen,
344
Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center,
262
Young, Bill,
227
Yousafzai, Malala,
421
Zardari, Asif Ali,
349
–51
Zarif, Mohammad Javad,
307
Zarqaqi, Abu Musab al-,
334
Zawahiri, Ayman al-,
206
,
329
,
337
Zayed, Mohammed bin,
431
Zero Dark Thirty,
397
Zimmermann Telegram,
36
Zubaida, Abu,
46
,
189
–90,
191
,
193
,
223
–24,
237
–38,
240
,
241
,
344
,
385
,
391
,
399
*
As opposed to the DCI. Prior to 2005, the director of CIA was also the head of the US intelligence community and called the director of Central Intelligence, or DCI. I just headed one agency, hence DCIA.
*
The American intelligence community has a near-impenetrable maze of abbreviations to describe civilians whose rank is comparable to that of general in the armed forces: SIS, SES, DISES, DISL. Collectively they are just referred to as “seniors.”
*
The
X
in this case is the point of maximum vulnerability. A common phrase in the intelligence community is “We have to get off the
X
here.”
*
IC (pronounced “eye-see”) refers to the confederation of sixteen agencies now more or less under the direction of the director of National Intelligence (DNI). The community ranges from well-known members like NSA and CIA to more obscure ones like the small intelligence shops in the Drug Enforcement Administration or the Department of Energy.
*
Since we’ve never had a gun in the house, only the “going to church” theme applied to me personally. We were so committed to the latter that we actually brought our parish priest along on a family vacation during our first tour in Korea. In retirement I combined the themes during a graduation address at the Franciscan University of Steubenville when I talked about sniper fire in Sarajevo. I told the graduates that if they were tempted to sleep in and miss Mass on a Sunday morning, they should ask themselves, “Are there snipers on the way to church?” “If the answer was no,” I told them, “get out of bed.”
*
Since this was a bit out of the ordinary, I informed the chair and ranking member of the intelligence oversight committees and offered to come down and brief the full committees. The House took me up on my offer, and I briefed them on October 1.
*
Many SIGINT reports are composed of multiple intercepts.
*
Of course, the
Times
has no authority to declassify. What they did was to simply reveal the information.
*
Given all my opportunitities to testify in 2006, I was right.
*
Senators Frist, Daschle, Roberts, and Rockefeller plus Congress members Hastert, Pelosi, Goss, and Harman.
*
Which, of course, became its own source of contention after Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 (chapter 21). Sometimes you just can’t win.
*
Over time the court authorized the remaining aspects of Stellarwind and legislative underpinnings were created in the Protect America Act (2007), the FISA Amendments Act (2008), and the inclusion of some activities under Section 215 of the Patriot Act. By then, though, I was at CIA and largely out of the picture.
*
In air combat, top cover refers to fighter aircraft flying at high altitude to protect more vulnerable forces below. We owed Harman something like that since she wanted to be supportive, but it would be at great cost within her party.
*
The suit was later dismissed since neither Bamford nor the other plaintiffs had standing. They could not show that they had been the target of anything.
*
At NSA my predecessor and I were air force officers who had also commanded the Air Intelligence Agency. Our categorization had an eerie resemblance to the way that American airpower is organized and explained: reconnaissance (CNE), bombers (CNA), and fighters (CND).
*
An accusation that information, like smoke, moves vertically in an organization but not horizontally between organizations.
*
The East German intelligence service notorious for the voluminous files it kept on everyone, files created by citizens reporting on other citizens.
*
The NCTC, not to be confused with CIA’s Counterterrorism Center (CTC). Both organizations persist, undoubtedly with some overlap and duplication, but with NCTC broadly focused on threats and CTC broadly concerned with taking the fight to the enemy.
*
Mohamed later received a one-million-pound settlement from the British government, in part to spare the government more litigation and the need to release even more documents in its own defense.
*
Apparently, loyalty continued to be a big thing with him. He later wrote a letter from Guantánamo to his Ohio-based lawyer trashing Akron native LeBron James as a “very bad man” for leaving the Cleveland Cavaliers.
*
Which also probably made it easier for Assad to let the eventual air strike pass without an outward response. More would have learned about the embarrassment if he had reacted.
*
They
will
cheat, of course. It’s what they do. But here I’m talking about cheating with strategic significance.
*
Focus pays off. We briefed President Bush in December 2008 about closing in on Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, bin Laden’s courier and the eventual key to finding him at Abbottabad.
*
As I was about to leave CIA, my British counterpart John Scarlett presented me with a framed replica of the cable that the wartime MI6 station chief in Washington had sent to London introducing Donovan to his headquarters.
“Impossible to over emphasize importance of DONOVAN’s visit. He has (been) controlling influence over KNOX, strong influence over STIMSON, friendly advisory influence HULL and President. A Catholic, Irish American descent, Republican holding confidence of Democrats, with an exceptional war record, places him in unique position to advance our aims here.”
Our British allies have an appreciation for history (and bloodlines).
*
Later the head of ISI, the Pakistani intelligence service.
*
To be fair, the Intelligence Authorization Act of
2008
would have confined all US government agencies to the interrogation techniques in the Army Field Manual, but the bill was vetoed by President Bush.
*
In the summer of 2015 I met with presidential candidate Jeb Bush. When the subject of interrogation techniques came up, I opined that—after the memos being released, the techniques being exposed, and CIA officers seemingly abandoned—any future president who would want to resurrect the techniques had better practice up because he would have to administer them himself.
*
In the June 2015 USA Freedom Act, Congress gave NSA six months to end its acquisition of American metadata, although the agency could still access it by going directly to American telecoms with its queries.
*
Neither confirming nor denying the existence of something, as the government did in 1975 in response to a
Los Angeles Times
story on the recovery of a Soviet submarine from the bottom of the Pacific by the Hughes Corporation’s
Glomar Explorer
.
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