Ex-NSA chief backs Apple on iPhone ‘back doors’

McLEAN, Va. — Retired four-star general Michael Hayden, who as director of the NSA installed and still defends the controversial surveillance program to collect telephone metadata on millions of Americans, says he opposes proposals to force Apple and other tech companies to install "back doors" in digital devices to help law enforcement.

In an emerging court battle over access to information on the iPhone owned by one of the San Bernardino attackers, Hayden says "the burden of proof is on Apple" to show that limited cooperation with investigators would open the door to broader privacy invasions. Apple is being asked not to decrypt information on the smartphone but rather to override the operating system so investigators could try an endless series of passwords to unlock it.

"In this specific case, I'm trending toward the government, but I've got to tell you in general I oppose the government's effort, personified by FBI Director Jim Comey," Hayden told Capital Download in an interview about his memoir, Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror. "Jim would like a back door available toAmerican law enforcement in all devices globally. And, frankly, I think on balance that actually harms American safety and security, even though it might make Jim's job a bit easier in some specific circumstances."

In a statement released late Sunday, Comey said the San Bernardino litigation "isn't about trying to set a precedent or send any kind of message. It is about the victims and justice. Fourteen people were slaughtered and many more had their lives and bodies ruined. We owe them a thorough and professional investigation under law. That's what this is. The American people should expect nothing less from the FBI."

Hayden, 70, brings unparalleled credentials to the roiling debate. The retired Air Force general is the only person ever to head both the super-secret National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency. In his 448-page memoir, published Tuesday by Penguin Press, he recalls being at the NSA on Sept. 11, 2001, when Al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He led the CIA during firestorms over its detention and interrogation of terror suspects, and while targeted killings by drones grew.

The title of the book — on the jacket, even the words bleed to the edge — refers to his conclusion that intelligence officials should play so close to the line that they get chalk dust on their cleats. "It's unapologetic," he says of his account of the decision-making behind drone attacks, the use of waterboarding and other interrogation techniques, the intelligence failures in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, and the culture of America's espionage agencies.

All that makes his conclusion that privacy concerns should trump security demands on this issue — putting him on the side of libertarian Sen. Rand Pauland fugitive NSA contractor Edward Snowden — especially powerful.

A federal District Court judge in California last week ordered Apple to bypass security barriers on the iPhone 5c that had been used by Syed Rizwan Farook, who with his wife killed 14 people at an office holiday party in December. In a defiant public letter, Apple CEO Tim Cook announced the company wouldn't comply. Apple argues the tool inevitably would be used not just in one isolated case but repeatedly.

The showdown has reinvigorated proposals for Congress to pass a law that would require tech companies including Apple, Facebook and Google to provide a "back door" in digital devices so law-enforcement officials could access encrypted information during investigations. The debate has become an issue in the presidential campaign. Republican frontrunner Donald Trump has called for a boycott of Apple products unless the company cooperates with the San Bernardino investigators.

"Look, I used to run the NSA, OK?" Hayden told USA TODAY's weekly video newsmaker series. "Back doors are good. Please, please, Lord, put back doors in, because I and a whole bunch of other talented security services around the world — even though that back door was not intended for me — that back door will make it easier for me to do what I want to do, which is to penetrate. ...

"But when you step back and look at the whole question of American security and safety writ large, we are a safer, more secure nation without back doors," he says. With them, "a lot of other people would take advantage of it."

Hayden was interviewed in the living room of his home in the northern Virginia suburbs, not far from the CIA, decorated with furniture, artwork and mementos from his foreign postings and long career: Carved chests from Korea, religious icons from Bulgaria, a small oil painting of an outdoor scene presented as a gift by the Romanian intelligence service.
A trim man with a crisp military bearing, Hayden is watching with some concern the debate over national security in the 2016 campaign. Democratic president Bill Clinton appointed him to head the NSA; Republican president George W. Bush appointed him to head the CIA. (Hayden was an adviser to and supporter of former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who suspended his candidacy Saturday.)

"It takes a complex process and tries to capture it in something about the length of a bumper sticker," he says. "Some candidates say we should use waterboarding and a lot more because they deserve it," a reference to Trump. "Well, we never used any technique against anyone because they deserved it. ... The things we did were forward-looking, to learn things to protect America.

"The same thing with regard to carpet-bombing," a tactic endorsed by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz against the self-proclaimed Islamic State. "Carpet-bombing is inherently immoral and unworthy of a nation like ourselves."

And he calls Trump's proposal to ban temporarily all Muslims from entering the United States "absolutely not helpful, incredibly harmful" in a battle against terrorism in which the biggest threat comes from self-radicalized individuals living in the United States.

"It goes to the character of us as a nation," he says. "We are a welcoming society. We assimilate immigrants far better than our European friends. And it shows up, it shows up in the fact that most of these horrific events don't happen here. They happen there. Why would you put at risk a war-winning advantage — i.e. you are a welcoming society? Why would you put that at risk by that kind of pronouncement? That actually is incredibly harmful to American safety — just saying that that would be your policy."

Hayden also is caustic when asked about potential security breaches from the decision by Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton to exclusively use of a private email server when she was secretary of State.

"Once you've set it up this way, nobody has to be stupid, lazy, unintelligent — it's gone bad," he says. "You've going to end up with information on this private server that just shouldn't be there, let alone all the questions about preserving government records." Those concerns aren't allayed even if no classified material was sent or received at her private address, he says.

"How much energy would I expend if I were still director of the National Security Agency and someone told me I could get access to the unclassified email server of [Russian Foreign Minister] Sergei Lavrov? I'd move heaven and Earth to do that. And here you've got these private, intimate conversations by a senior official of the U.S. government sitting out there in what I would call an unprotected environment."

The disclosure that Clinton had used the private server was a surprise last year to reporters and others. Does he assume that foreign intelligence agencies long had known about it and targeted it?

"I would lose all respect for a whole bunch of foreign intelligence agencies if they weren't sitting back, paging through the emails," he replied.

Snowden, spies and security

Hayden has had a reputation as a plain-spoken man, and he's no longer constrained by the senior offices he held in the Air Force, the NSA and the CIA. Among his comments in his interview with Capital Download:

• On whether Americans are safer than they were on 9/11: "That danger level has gone down steadily ... (but) here's the sad story. I think since 2012, that line has been going back up. ... It's the growth of ISIS. It's Jihad 2.0 coming at us — a very tough, violent enemy living in a safe haven the size of a good-sized American state, not in the middle of nowhere like Afghanistan, but in the middle of the Middle East."

• On the biggest threat ahead for the United States: "For the things that can go bump in the night tonight and really affect us, I put terrorism and cyber attack. ... Go out three, four, five years in the future, here I begin to worry about states I call ambitious, brittle and nuclear: Iran, Pakistan, North Korea, even the Russians." Ten years in the future, the challenge is China, he said. "If we don't get our relationship with the emerging People's Republic of China right, that is something that could lead to global catastrophe."

• On the possibility of a plea bargain for fugitive NSA contractor Edward Snowden: "I pity the American president who thinks he can be lenient on Mr. Snowden and believe that would be cost-free amongst the people on which he will continue to rely on for the safety of the nation."

• On a lesson learned from leaks that exposed the NSA's metadata collection of Americans' phone records: "When it comes out that way, the natural American instinct is to take that story and run to the darkest corner of the room. If we had been more open about what we had been doing, it would have counteracted that a bit. For want of a better word, it would have immunized our society against what I viewed as an overreaction to the revelation."

• On today's challenge for intelligence agencies: "To be good, American espionage has to be powerful and it has to be secretive inside a political culture that more and more distrusts two things: power and secrecy."

• On balancing security and liberty: "What we're trying to do here is what free people and this free people have done since the inception of the republic, which is to balance two things, both of which are virtues: our security and our privacy. There are no permanent answers to that. We debate them continuously based on the totality of circumstances in which we find ourselves. The point I make to our countrymen: This is not a struggle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. This is a good people, trying to find the right balance."

• On why the presidential campaign of Jeb Bush, whom he had endorsed, struggled: "Because a significant portion of the American electorate in both parties are right now more interested in what I would call a primal scream. We're actually getting a very robust primal scream out of a candidate in each party right now. ... I understand the primal scream. People are frustrated. But you can't govern with a primal scream."