Western intelligence agencies must be more transparent -Former NSA Chief

5 October The guardian

Former NSA director Michael Hayden said he did not consider Edward Snowden a whistleblower because he did not expose wrongdoing.

Western intelligence agencies must be more transparent and open to scrutiny if they are to keep public support for the type of mass surveillance techniques that have been revealed by Edward Snowden, a former director of the US National Security Agency has admitted.

General Michael Hayden said he believed the American and British intelligence agencies had to "show a lot more leg" if they wanted to win broad public understanding and support for the type of programmes they were undertaking.

Speaking in London, Hayden said western security services were having to make difficult adjustments to new challenges. It was not fair for America's critics to "cross your arms and cluck at us", he said.

Hayden was director of the NSA for six years between 1999 and 2005, and was director of the CIA for three years until 2009.

Speaking in Westminster at an event organised by the Henry Jackson Society, Hayden admitted security agencies had become too secretive for their own good.

Even if every individual decision to keep something secret could be justified, the total effect was harmful, he argued.

"It's clear to me now that in liberal democracies the security services don't get to do what they do without broad public understanding and support.

"And although the public cannot be briefed on everything, there has to be enough out there so that the majority of the population believe what they are doing is acceptable."

He added: "My community has to show a lot more leg or we won't get to do any of what we want to do because the public support is so withdrawn that, politically, nobody is going to give us the authorisation."

Presidents can do "one-offs" without constitutional authority, he said, but "no president can do something repeatedly over a long term without that broad popular support".

The problem for western intelligence agencies was that they were designed in a different era, and are trying to change tack to face new enemies.