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Michael V. Hayden

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The Assault on Intelligence: American National Security in an Age of Lies Kindle Edition

by Michael V. Hayden (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.5 604 ratings

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A blistering critique of the forces threatening the American intelligence community, beginning with the President of the United States himself, in a time when that community's work has never been harder or more important

In the face of a President who lobs accusations without facts, evidence, or logic, truth tellers are under attack. Meanwhile, the world order is teetering on the brink. North Korea is on the verge of having a nuclear weapon that could reach all of the United States, Russians have mastered a new form of information warfare that undercuts democracy, and the role of China in the global community remains unclear. There will always be value to experience and expertise, devotion to facts, humility in the face of complexity, and a respect for ideas, but in this moment they seem more important, and more endangered, than they've ever been. American Intelligence--the ultimate truth teller--has a responsibility in a post-truth world beyond merely warning of external dangers, and in The Assault on Intelligence, General Michael Hayden takes up that urgent work with profound passion, insight and authority.

It is a sobering vision. The American intelligence community is more at risk than is commonly understood, for every good reason. Civil war or societal collapse is not necessarily imminent or inevitable, but our democracy's core structures, processes, and attitudes are under great stress. Many of the premises on which we have based our understanding of governance are now challenged, eroded, or simply gone. And we have a President in office who responds to overwhelming evidence from the intelligence community that the Russians are, by all acceptable standards of cyber conflict, in a state of outright war against us, not by leading a strong response, but by shooting the messenger.

There are fundamental changes afoot in the world and in this country. The Assault on Intelligence shows us what they are, reveals how crippled we've become in our capacity to address them, and points toward a series of effective responses. Because when we lose our intelligence, literally and figuratively, democracy dies.

Editorial Reviews

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“For a longtime spook, Hayden is a breezy and direct writer. He reduces complex issues of cyber and information warfare to essentials, and his polemic is leavened with humor and sympathy. He is at his best, though, when he shifts to a purely analytical tone. He coolly forecasts the direction of America under Trump, explains the intelligence that foreign governments are likely to collect from the president’s Twitter feed and describes the benefits Russia drew from the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Kremlin-connected Russian attorneys and senior Trump campaign officials.” — The New York Times

“The more important, absorbing and disturbing aspect of Hayden’s book is the analysis from his professional perspective of what Trump and Trumpism mean for the intelligence community. It is sober, nuanced and, quite frankly, scary as hell.” - Mark Galeotti, Washington Post

About the Author

Michael Hayden is a retired United States Air Force four-star general and former Director of the National Security Agency, Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence, and Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He is currently a principal at the Chertoff Group, a security consultancy founded by former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. Hayden also serves as a Distinguished Visiting Professor at George Mason University's Schar School of Policy and Government and is the founder of the Hayden Center for Intelligence, Policy, and International Security there. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Playing to the Edge.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B07B2K8CYZ
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Penguin Books; Reprint edition (May 1, 2018)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ May 1, 2018
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1193 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 303 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #627,840 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #168 in Biographies of Espionage
- #409 in Intelligence & Espionage (Kindle Store)
- #527 in Espionage True Accounts

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Marc A. Meyer

Very Informative Book!

Reviewed in the United States on September 20, 2023

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Michael Hayden's clear and concise writing style along with his tremendous knowledge of the intelligence community makes for a very informative read, no matter which sides of the political spectrum you are on. Highly recommend!

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Happy Doc

Highly insightful

Reviewed in the United States on July 23, 2018

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One of the best recent books from the intelligence community. Hayden presents a careful analysis paired with actionable conclusions that honestly represent the history and intentions of our founding fathers.
One early insightful comment analyzes the flawed actions of those who "Do not know what they do not know."
To counter this we must have informed and aware citizens capable of understanding complex information and making rational judgments. Our free system depends on this very informed citizenry. Disinformation is one concern, and I would add the crippling of the education system and the exposure of most of the population to environmental contaminants that impair thought and judgement as agents of equivalent urgency.
Highly recommended. An excellent investment of your time.

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Isaac Rounseville

Very well written and accurate, but doesn't address legitimate fears of overreach

Reviewed in the United States on August 19, 2018

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First off, Michael Hayden is a thoughtful, honest, and caring public servant. Unlike many other former intelligence officials criticizing the current man-child in the White House, Hayden stands out for his sincerity in listening to opponents and recognizing the legitimacy of their grievances. He also appears to take extreme care in managing his own public pronouncements and the potential (and possibly undue) influence he wields as a former intelligence leader. He's also a great writer, which made this book a pretty breezy and enjoyable read. He does a good job weaving his main point about the importance of intelligence organizations working in concert with policymakers into a larger critical narrative of the Obama and Trump administrations.

Since 2016, the delicate, occasionally frustrated relationship between intelligence and policymakers during the Obama administration has been put under enormous strain. Trump, unsurprisingly, is attacking intelligence organizations in a typically short-sighted and self-interested fashion, not recognizing that their role, while more wide-ranging and far-sighted, is ultimately designed to be beneficial for the survival and functioning of his presidency. This book is definitely a good primer on recent events, their potential impact, and the importance of realizing just how shallow and juvenile our current president is, both through his public statements and his actions. While Hayden harnesses history and his experience to contextualize the ascent of Trump, he doesn't hold back in detailing the alarming reality that the calculus behind so many executive decisions is centered around personal loyalty to a transparently foolish, impulsive, and self-centered person.

My main problem with the book is Hayden's dismissiveness of the "deep state" narrative pushed forward by a lot of right-wing commentators. While it's true that many right-wing critiques of "deep state" authorities smack of trutherism, crazy conspiracy theories, and pathological paranoia (e.g. Alex Jones), this shouldn't eclipse the legitimate (albeit sometimes insincere) points made by many on the right about the growth of the administrative state since the 1970s. The quasi-judicial, legislative, and executive powers exercised by unelected bureaucrats, all the way from the CIA to the FEC, should concern any individual who cares about individual liberty or the legitimacy and effectiveness of institutions. I think Hayden could have devoted a lot more detail to this subject of the "Fourth Branch of Government," which seems to lie at the heart of several disagreements between U.S. citizens, intellectuals, and politicians. While I do think Trump and a lot of his cult-like acolytes share alarming characteristics with authoritarian regimes of years past, the issues that many of his supporters highlight (particularly relating to the deconstruction of the administrative state) need to be addressed in good faith if we have any hope of restoring sanity and accountability to our government.

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geminif4ucorsair

Hayden's concern is the "truth" and how the intelligence community has responded to Trump

Reviewed in the United States on March 23, 2019

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I wouldn't call (Gen.) Hayden's book a plolemic. It certainly is not in the hyperbole category (as "Fear", "Collusion", and "Russian Roulette" are more in this vein. As such, it more a serious attempt to present the intelligence community (IC)
response to Trump, from pre-election thru post-2016 election periods.

For Hayden, the search for "truth" - and the threat to truth in the post-Trump world of today - is a major theme within the book. Hayden writes: "Over the years it became clear to me that the structures, processes and attitudes that prtect us from Thomas Hobbes's world of "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" lives are not naturally occurring things. They are inherently fragile and demand careful tending if they are to survive. Deeply involved in this is the question of truth." (p. 3)

In his chapter "Withering America...and everyone else?", he compares the past worlds of President's Hamilton and Jefferson, noting: "Hamilton's eighteenth-century rival offered another view...Jeffersonian, model: America as a shining city on a hill, a shining city that demands nearly all of our attention. History pushed Jefferson into conflict inNorth Africa, and he did, after all, buy Louisiana, but fundamentally he was about turning inward and focusing here. Barack Obama, especially in his second term, showed a lot of Jefferson....." To Hayden community, "security, and America was about to face its most fundamental foreign policy decisions in nearly three-quarters of a century." , He asks the question: "What did Donald Trump mean for that?" In answering that question, he puts Trump as "pure Jeffersonian": nationalist, populist, nativist, suspicious of the outside world - and willing to use force to beat it back" (p. 40)

In his later chapter titled "The Transition", Hayden discusses the difficulties facing the IC during the Trump transition period, post-November election and the inauguration ceremony. He asks: "....what do you do with someone who does not distinguish between truth and untruth? He quote one member as suggesting they rechisel that famous quote in the CIA's lobby to read: "And ye shall know the alternative facts, and they shall make you free." [A clear slap at Trump...]

Hayden has no qualms at critiquing the U.S. IC either. In his Trump, Russia and Truth chapter, he questions those within the community by asking: "And then there was the question of the lens we were using to understand all of this. Committed to a path of cyber dominance for ourselves, we seems to lack the doctrinal decisions to fully understand what the Russians were up to with their more full-spectrum information dominance.

In the last chapter (The Future of Truth), Hayden refers to his reprising and offers the suggestion to begin with Lenin's famous treatise: Chto Delat? (What is to be Done?). He offers suggestions, based on his own appreciation of the problem(s) - you need to read the book for the answers(!) - and then observes: "In the meantime though, societies like America need to defend themselves as best they can from external exploitation and manipulation. A major portion of that task falls squarely to American intelligence - but so does a not unimportant role in addressing the first and larger question. The two - that state of truth and the state of Russian meddling - actually intersected in a July 2017 NPR / PBS News Hour Marist poll that found that 73-percent of Democrats thought Russia was a major threat to U.S. elections, while only 17-percent of Republican thought so. A quarter of Republicans rejected the concept that Russia was ever involved in the fist place." (p. 240).

This reviewer would suggest that someone has their "head in the sand"! After reading the thirty-some indictments brought forth by the Justice Department against the multitude of Trump Administration and non-administration individuals by the Mueller special council, indicates at minimum, "truth" was not a priority of these individuals when it came to contacting Russia and those anxious to bring Russia into the administrations fold. With Mueller having submitted his final report to AG Barr now, details that support - or contradict - the pervading view of Hayden will be made more clear.

As this review might indicate, the book is much more a quest of philosophical questions that need resolving, than some hyperbole polemic about an individual or his administration. Conclusion: buy and read it!

Beyond the books text chapters (eight), are twenty pages of Notes and a Index (ten pages).

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Jeremy Richler

Brilliant account from a decorated national intelligence director

Reviewed in Canada on June 7, 2018

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Brilliant account from a decorated national intelligence director. Hayden's account of the assault on truth, and how it undermines our institutions of a democracy is a must read for anyone that cares about the future of our liberal democratic order. Whether you are liberal or conservative, an institutionalist or a populist weary of the establishment, there should be one maxim that unites us all; an embrace of facts and truth at the core of our values, ideals and interactions. Fissures and divisions have always existed, and we are bound to live in a polarized political sphere for some time. Let's hope that this unparalleled assault on the truth by the Trump administration and other alt right dialogues are soon discarded to the dustbins of history. This sure won't be an easy task, but Hayden provides some useful insights as to how we got here, and what can be done to return to a more stable, consensus and evidence based future.

3 people found this helpful

Muhammad Mahmood Ahmad

Good quality

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 15, 2019

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Thanks. Quick and Good Quality

One person found this helpful

rama ramakrishnan

Intops

Reviewed in India on October 19, 2018

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A fab insight into the domain of intelligence operations of US

Cliente Amazon

An insiders view on what's going on in US at the moment

Reviewed in Spain on August 14, 2018

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Michael V. Hayden, former Director of the National Security Agency, gives his views on what's going on in the USA in the age of lies. The book is very well written, and I highly recommend it.

Chillyfinger

Penetrating Insight on the State of "Intelligence" Under a Post-Fact Administration

Reviewed in Canada on June 15, 2018

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A quick read. Well written, authoritative and to the point.

Putin's candidate in the White House is having a crippling effect in many subtle ways that only an insider can explain. Hayden is Republican with no ax to grind (He sidesteps the active role Republicans have played in enabling the "post-fact" climate). One key insight is the fact that an administration that is actively hostile to the facts (and those whose job it is to find the facts) winds up failing its responsibility to direct and fund measures to ward off the attack that got the Putin candidate into office in the first place. Not only has it become impossible to "speak truth to power". That "power" actively seeks to blind us to the continuing attack or even acknowledging that the attack is underway.

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