Q&A: Gen. Michael Hayden
When you throw that switch … we're jumping into the deep end of the pool. That is transformational. That sets in motion a whole series of secondary and tertiary events now. That, frankly, is what the DNI's all about. It's a staff with enough expertise and enough size that it's not dependent on the constituent parts for information. It says we're putting these guys on this network, and here's the date we're throwing the switch, and you can do what you have to do between now and then–rather than the reverse, which is let's all get in a room and negotiate a point in time when we will all be ready.
The question of security seems like the elephant in the room when you're talking about everything from dealing with local law enforcement to dealing with foreign liaison partnerships.
Yeah, how long it takes to clear a contractor, how much one agency respects the security clearance process of another agency. And CIA, historically, is conservative about this for reasons that are legitimate, but the line has moved, the line is moving, and the line will continue to move in terms of how we access things. I did bring in one guy from another agency and the first noise from the clearance system was, "Well, we're going to have run a background investigation on him and do all the things we do for new employees." He's coming from NSA! And to their credit, the security folks here said: "We now have two bodies of policy. One body that's internal to the agency–that says this is what it takes to get on the computer system. The other is a broader community policy that talks about respecting agency clearances crosswise, left to right, in the agency. And without prompting, the security guy says, we go with B.
Was he making an exception because you're the director?
I don't think so. I think it is an indication of a sea change.
We're still trying to figure out the relationship between the CIA and the Department of Defense, especially when it comes to HUMINT [human intelligence], and where that line is and how easy it is to draw that.
I am the national HUMINT manager. I'm the national HUMINT manager because the ambassador wants me to do it, and I'm the national HUMINT manager because if you look at the body of documents that govern our community, it points you strongly in that direction, and the language that's used for that is that I coordinate, deconflict, and evaluate. And I intend to do that for HUMINT by whomever it is conducted in whatever form.
Has that process begun already?
Absolutely.
Can you help us understand then how the National Clandestine Service concept at the CIA is different from before? Some critics say that you've just changed the name.
No. My line is "wherever it is, by whomever it is done, in whatever form." If you were collecting information from human beings for foreign intelligence purposes, you just slipped into the box that I believe the national HUMINT manager governs, to coordinate, deconflict, and evaluate. That's a little bit different; that's not operational control. OK. Coordinate, deconflict, and evaluate. The score on that one is that it's not going badly. The DOD is actually being quite good about that. We're going to write common procedures. We're going to have common standards for source evaluation. We're going to have common standards for classifying information; we're going to have common standards for how we share that information. We're going to have common formats so that your machine and my machine can take the same report and present it in the same way.
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