Fmr CIA and NSA Head Hayden: Comey Firing Will ‘Chill’ Effort by Experts to Inform the President

On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Lead,” Gen. Michael Hayden (Ret.), who served as head of the CIA and the NSA said the firing of FBI Director James Comey “will chill the bureaucracy, let me call it the permanent government…the experts…their efforts to make this president as well-informed as he should be.”

Hayden said, “I’ve got a problem with regard to good judgment, on the part of our government. What happened last week will chill the bureaucracy, let me call it the permanent government, you know, the experts, the ones on which most presidents rely to help them make wiser policy, that will chill their efforts to make this president as well-informed as he should be. It’s not a lack of courage. I think Dan Coates and Mike Pompeo and others are going to go in and talk to the president, but there’s going to be a delay. If that’s what you get when you bring unhappy news to the president, you’re going to want to make sure you’re really, really sure that the unhappy news is true, and the body of evidence that you require for that is going to be a really big stack. So, I fear what’s happen is, the president is either not going to learn things, or he’s going to learn things later than he would otherwise have learned, and that’s going to be to the detriment, not just to the nation, but to the president.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett