Information security

Hayden: The Biggest Threat To The Intelligence Community Is Already Inside The Intelligence Community

Ideologically inspired leakers inside the intelligence community are the biggest threat to U.S. secrets, Michael Hayden, former Air Force general and NSA head, said to McClatchy.

The CIA is in the midst of a manhunt to find a leaker who distributed classified cyber hacking tools to Wikileaks. Hayden’s comments highlight that most modern day leakers are not caused by foreign intelligence agencies flipping current U.S. government employees with traditional spying techniques.

“In the past, we’ve lost secrets to foreign adversaries,” Hayden declared. He continued, “Now we’ve got the self-motivated insider that is our most important counterintelligence challenge.” Hayden pointed to 2009 leaker Chelsea Manning, 2013 leaker Edward Snowden, and most recent NSA leaker Harold Martin.

These cases differ strongly from the high profile cases of the 1980s and early 2000s where foreign cash motivated the most prolific insider threats within the intelligence community. “No foreign service used any of those characteristics against any of the people we mentioned,” Hayden highlighted. He posed, “How do you stop that?”