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Between the Expected and the Inevitable

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Posted: March 23rd, 2016

By General Michael Hayden

General Michael V. Hayden is a retired four-star General in the United States Air Force; he served as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2006-2009 and as Director of the National Security Agency from 1999-2005.

The Cipher Brief: First Paris, then San Bernardino, now Brussels. How widespread are ISIS networks in Europe and North America, and can we expect these kinds of attacks on a regular basis?  

Michael Hayden:  This attack was not surprising.  It was somewhere between expected and inevitable.  It’s right in that band of what we expected—the country that was targeted, the specific facilities that were targeted, even the success of the attacks in terms of the relative damage it caused.  All were within the range of things I think we knew were coming at us. 

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