41 year career in the air force and in the National Intelligence and National Security area and talk to us about his book, playing to the edge american intelligence in the age of terror. The title playing to the edge is kind of a Sports Metaphor i think. Its like pushing the envelope or playing right to the edge of the field with truck in your cleats and its appropriate that general hayden would use Sports Metaphors. He practically was born in the shadow of the Pittsburgh Steelers stadium. They tore down my home to build three rivers stadium. All right. And we didnt mind because it was the steelers. Modestly dangerous comment. He was born in pittsburgh, of Irish Catholic family and the son of a welder. In Junior High School he was quarterback of his Football Team and coach of the Football Team then was the son of the founder of the steelers, the connection with his team who goes way back and theres actually a road now along the side of the stadium called Michael Hayden road and he was equipment manager working the sidelines of the steelers when he was in college at duquesne and doing air force rotc and also went and got his na in American History from st. Peters Elementary School in north catholic high school, and he makes it clear in this very candid and personal memoir how much his young education really mattered. He says toward the end of the book, the further i got in my career, the more i realize the patient so here we are at the school had he has a lot to say about the importance of education in that age. And i understand you still get up early on in the fall and go to mass, drive to pittsburgh. I do. So you must have been a tenant or a captain, just maybe eight years into your career when a major event for the Intelligence Community was underway. Im talking about the Church Hearings into the behavior of the cia and fbi which took place in 1975. How was this important to you . I was a point in my career on guam. Senior officer and frankly, ive gotten on wall and 72, came back at the time, b52 operations over Southeast Asia so im very tactically focused with all these things going on in washington, it made the headlines of the stars and stripes but it didnt affect me personally and i didnt dig into them very much but steve and i were talking before we came in that i certainly learned the fine print of everything that came out of church pipe in the 1970s because that was the structure that we had been decided that we would use to govern the american Intelligence Community and very briefly, 375 it wasnt so much that the agencies were breaking the law. It was more that the law hadnt paid any attention to the agencies. There wasnt a clear code of thou shalt not. And then it just kind of floated back and forth about the clear distinctions that you need to have in an enterprise that frankly was so large, so powerful and secretive and i hope we get to this later stephen but one of the things i learned is that at church pike architecture, we then decided we would government american espionage, is now itself eroding. Is now itself is looking insufficient to an awful lot of americans in terms of governing what it is we do which is one of the things i suggest in the book as what now . In terms of going forward. On august 17 in 1975, father frank church appeared on nbc on meet the press to get a summary of what his committee had covered. He was a political actor at that point, planning to run for president until canada terminated his candidacy and he made spacefor jimmy carter. And he wrote , he said discussing the nsa which general hayden later ran from 1999 to 2005, he said without mentioning the nsa by name, in the need to develop a capacity to know what potential enemies are doing, the United States government has perfected Technological Capabilities that enable us to monitor the messages that go through the air. Kind of touching. He talks about how they could even intercept telegrams. Its got more sophisticated then, he says its necessary and important the United States look abroad at potential enemies, we must know at the same time that capability that anytime could be turned around on the American People and no american would have any privacy left. Such is the capability to monitor everything, telephone conversations, telegrams, doesnt matter, there would be no place to hide. Then he says if this government ever became a tyranny, if an authoritarian ever took charge in this country, the technological capacity of the intelligence communities of the government could enable it to impose total tyranny and there would be no way to fight back because the most careful efforts to combine together in resistance no matter how privately it was done is within the reach of the government to know. Such is the capability of thistechnology. I dont ever want to see this country go across that bridge. I know the capacity is there could make total tyranny in america and we must see to it that this agency, all agencies operate within the law and in proper supervision so that we never cross over that abyss. A quote at length from senator church because i think it sums up general haydens career that he was working at many levels including the topmost to make sure this technology can operate within the law and under proper provision so that we never cross over that abyss. So your job was to make sure that what you said never happens. But over time, the capabilities obviously grew and the possibilities increased so. Wow, theres a lot to unpack here, let me take a little at a time. Come of it might be revealing, you got senator church, i was fond of saying when i woke up and 97 that the nsa needed only two things to be successful. It needed to be secretive and it needed to be powerful and we exist in a political culture that frankly addressed only two things. Secrecy and power. And so youve got this unnatural position inside of a western democracy but you do need what it is that the nsa can offer. The trick is that its pointed toward the nations adversaries and bythe way, its foreign adversaries. And its never turned inward against the American People, threatening its liberties. Thats pretty nice, thats a nice dichotomy. Thats almost manichaean. Pointed over here, dont dont pointed over there. For example when we are flooding the zone against the communications of the soviet union and let me take a specific example, lets use soviet srf, Strategic Rocket forces. Their big headquarters in moscow and it got to communicate to their icbm fields beyond the urals on the steps of soviet asia. We would monitor that network like nobodys business as i am fond of saying, looking looking for works of interest in theircommunication. And there isnt a civil libertarian or a senator who would ever lift a finger with regard to concerns about that. What happens which makes it more difficult and senator church and those folks in the 70s ever imagined, by 2000 and picking that carefully, this is pre9 11 stuff, its prior to the terrorist attack and the kind of reshuffling of the balance of security, liberty, privacy, safety, i testified in open session in front of the House Intel Committee and the issue we had is that again, no one paid any attention to us going afterStrategic Rocket forces network. But if you wanted us to do for you in the 21st century what we had done for you in the 20th century, in this case since there was no longer a soviet union, you were more concerned about terrorist communications, proliferator communications, communications of transnational criminals and so on, if you wanted us to get them for you and you did and that was our job, what we said in 2000, april 2000 and open session, what we said was you realize those communications no longer exists and not other network over there. Those communications coexist with your gmail. And they are skidding through those International Lights with your stuff right alongside of this. So its even more complex than senator church teams to indicate was this manichaean world where looking here is good and looking there is bad. What im telling you is the stuff that used to be here is now here and it commingled with the things you still want us to go get. So its even more difficult than senator church laid out. In other words, we had to go to you, frankly thats why were testifying to get the money and in essence the authority in a small way, the authority to go after these signals and the only way we believe we could get that was to actually convince the congress and indirectly you that even though your stuff would be getting by, we wouldnt touch it. That we wouldnt grab it. So this is even more dramatic and difficult in its own way, potentially more dangerous than what senator church tried to put out there as kind of a warning signal in the 1970s. You are in command of the nsa, on september 11, 2001. So i went to work, it was clear there wasnt a cloud in the sky. It was tuesday, i was up late watching monday night football. I came in, went and got a haircut. Came back, went to my off center, popped in, anything on the scope . No, things pretty normal, thank you. Went to the office and again i was having my meeting and as i was having one session, my executive assistant Sidney Vargas came in and said a plane at one of the trade centers. My reaction was it mustve been a small plane, how did that happen, it was a clear day. Went back to my meeting and she comes in and says a plane hit the other tower and i immediately said get the other head of security up. And a few minutes later as hes coming from one door of my office, cindy is coming through the other door saying there are reports of explosions in the mall , and thats a garble of the plane hitting the pentagon. And from a security standing, the chief of security is standing there and i never said a word. I said all nonessential out of here now, tell them to evacuate. Then we decided you live up here, you know what it looks like. We tried to get everybody we could out of the two highrises. And into that low rider. Its a threestory building thats near 32, its a steel building. Its the original Office Building so for obvious reasons to get them out of a highrise and into the low rider. For my benefit, thats where our center was. In the universe that i needed. And we just began to turn this massive enterprise in the direction of this target and we knew now this impending war, georgia tech called me a little bit later and said what do you got . I said george, we all knew it was al qaeda but their network is buying up with the conversation, and the gunfire and theyre all patting themselves on the back. Late that afternoon, early evening, again, remember how clear a day it was. Someone reminded me our counterterrorism shop, and you all know for immediate is the headquarters of the nsa. You probably know what a lot of audiences dont also the biggest field station, the nsa. Its just not managing the enterprise, its about 50 percent of the enterprise and the other 50 percent is kind of everywhere else. One of the shops that was in one of the highrises was counterterrorism. When i say counterterrorism, i dont mean filing paperwork , i mean people with headsets on. Listening to the intercept. You cant move them. All right, we cant stand the breaking condition, weve got to leave the counterterrorism shop and one of the highrises and just by itself, i want to remind you theyre still there so i went up, went in and you can look through the windows and see the darkening sky. I had bought, i couldnt but if we were nine stories higher, you couldve seen fort mchenry which is one of the last four departments of an american citizen. There were people from our Logistics Force packing up blackout curtains because they would have been obvious, like someone couldnt evacuate so i said this is weird, were talking about blackout curtains in the 21st century. The danger will be different. I walked around the room, most of them were rather american. They had the National Economy that we were dealing with, they had a special trauma to deal with. They had their jobs and because they were arabamerican i think it was even personal trauma for them, just given the nature of the impact, i didnt make any speeches, i just walked around hand on shoulder, nodded in their and so on. We, the agency turned on a dime. Its a very powerful dedicated thing in there. And we just like i said began to shift, we said were going over here. And were going to focus on this target. And its actually in a very short period of time began to produce something of great value, keeping you safe and making them feel unsafe. You might ask, where were you on september 9 or september 7 . And the answer was, im talking about this in the book the cause we had a variety of priorities. We had a lot of things that were competing for our attention. Those icbms were still there. They were now under russian control. So i mean immediately, at 10 30 on that tuesday morning, i didnt have anybodys permission, i started in. As busy as i could and one of the things that came out, one of the great new wishing initiatives was operation stellar wind. It was kind of a cool name for an operation. It means nothing. You cant know anything about it. Maybe does the same thing and we did our air operation over libya, we call it operation odyssey go on. Eloquence good. Obviously on sound like something a little girl would name an imaginary friend. But anyway, stellar wind. This is what Edward Snowden revealed later. In a form. Its sort of the fine print. This is kind of surveillance boring. This is the stop. This is why its not easy. So one of the things i did, probably a little afternoon on september 11, i know you all came along with Current Events and you know that rice and the us name and minimizing us names and unmasking us names, i usually have to spend a lot of time on the plane, i dont have to do that now. The nsa, secretary kennedy when they showed up to from or about the communication. They get your privacy. Unless of course this identity becomes critical to the intelligence. All i get in the afternoon , early afternoon of september 11, when were deciding to minimize. For communications to, communications between afghanistan and the United States of america, we get a little more liberal. We get a little more leaning forward and pushing us identity names , its always judgment. And nsa is notoriously selfserving in not putting the american name in there in the first place. We got 20,000 dead countrymen, and my enemy headquarters is in that other country. And they are communicating here to the us, so lean a little more forward. I didnt say expose all and youre making that value judgment, there over here rather than back herethough i as george said, i told him i called the committee. George point, the Committee Said church bike forum, i called and said im doing it a little different here. Im happy to come down and talk to you, the senate and i said your grades, the households explain it and i did and it was fine but i told george, so george in his morning update to president and Vice President , Vice President cheney, he goes in there and says im doing this, doing this, pretty soon after around 11 and what did george tells the story, he then says yes, one more thing. Mike hayden, hes going to jail. So again, going to limit the church bike, great concern and the president goes weve only got monday, will bail him out. And the president says whats he doing there and george said it has to do with us names. Hes fine but i want to let you know hes leaning forward to. And the president bush then says good, anything else he could be doing . George goes ill ask. So we goes back to langley, called me up and goes im president , Vice President going to jail, so on and so forth and the president then said is there anything more you could be doing . And i said george, no, not with in my current authorities. I paused and he goes not exactly what i asked, is it . Is there more you could do . If you had the authority . Ill get back to you. We hold up, for me, it was our lawyers and off sky. If we had the authority, what more can we do and we came up with broadly even three baskets of stock. And we developed it, i talked to george about it and about four days later on in the oval office. And well mister president , if we had the authority we would do these things. Im not going to into specifics but theres fine print in the book about what the three were. In essence, what happened on 9 11, pre9 11. We americans were trying to have to things in full measure. That life doesnt let you get. In full measure, liberty, security, privacy. And were trying to, in one of our techniques, one of our techniques was we have these big powerful intel guys with one church, hyperventilating about. And intel over here, really substantial stories, look out. Intel foreign. Law enforcement, over here. Domestic, much more limited. So thats foreign, intel, ethics, conflict. So those 19 guys come from, right here . Writing that quest. But the challenge was now how do we close the gap that they created consciously . As a way to ensure we would ever reach these agencies wouldnt do what they were intended to do. So the Stellar Wind Program with the baskets, three baskets of things that would make it , make us more capable of protecting a foreign enemy who maybe physically in the United States or at least whose communications would be in the United States. And we put those three things together, we improved it. I briefed congress on it about threeweeks after that, a small number. We briefed the fisa court on it, what did in congress right before the end of october,