Intelligence and Policy in the Face of Terrorism

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.

A slightly different version of this article appeared recently in the Washington Times.  General Hayden has requested that we reprint it in The Cipher Brief following Thursday’s horrific attack in Nice, France.  He believes that it has special relevance for the intelligence community today.

I recently joined other former security officials to urge the United States government to be generous to Syrian and other refugees driven from their homes by today’s conflicts.  We brought out the usual argument: we need to live up to our historical heritage as a refuge and, besides, failing to provide haven would prolong the kind of global disorder that ultimately makes us all less safe.

“The Cipher Brief has become the most popular outlet for former intelligence officers; no media outlet is even a close second to The Cipher Brief in terms of the number of articles published by formers.” —Sept. 2018, Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 62

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