President Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner was most likely naive, not nefarious, if he talked last year with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak about setting up a secret communications system with Moscow, but that's not comforting, former National Security Adviser and CIA Director Michael Hayden said Saturday.
"What manner of ignorance, chaos, hubris, suspicion, contempt, would you have to have to think that doing this with the Russian ambassador was a good or appropriate idea?" Hayden told CNN's Michael Smerconish.
"So again, naivety out, that doesn't make me feel good about many things."
According to a report in The Washington Post, Kushner and Kislyak, during a meeting on Dec. 1 or 2, discussed setting up a system that could not be traced between Moscow and the Trump transition team. The Post's source said Kushner proffered the idea for a channel that would have used Russian diplomatic operations, and Kislyak reported the suggestion to his superiors.
The idea may have come because the incoming Trump administration did not believe it could trust either the Obama administration or the intelligence community, noted Smerconish, and Hayden agreed.
"What degree of suspicion of the existing government, what degree of contempt for the administration they were replacing, would be required, to think this was an acceptable course of action?" Hayden said. "It says an awful lot about us as a society, that we could actually harbor those kinds of feelings that the organs of the state would be used by my predecessor to come after me or to intercept my communications or to disrupt my administration in a way that made it seem legitimate to me to use the secure communications facilities of a foreign power."
It makes even more odd, said Hayden, that the foreign power in question was Russia, considering the accusations of collusion already circling the Trump campaign.
"Here you are willing to risk the perception of secret communications with your alleged co-conspirator because you fear the existing government so much," said Hayden. "That suggests we're in a really dark place as a society."
It is always a possibility, said Hayden, that Kislyak was lying and the news is part of a disinformation campaign by the Russians, considering how much fake news they were putting out, "by the way, fake news that some members of the Trump campaign were pushing out forward into our own information sphere."
However, he said he does not really believe that happened.
"This is Kislyak reporting to home base along the lines of 'you won't believe what they just brought up to me.'" said Hayden. "I think this is perhaps as off putting to Kislyak as it is to you and me. Goes so far out of the norm that he was probably shocked by the request as well."
Hayden said he knows of no such side arrangements for a back channel in the United States' history, "certainly within my life experience."
He said the news, though, does explain why then-National Security Adviser Susan Rice wanted the identities of communications intercepted from Trump Tower to be unmasked, "so she can understand the intelligence value of that conversation."
Meanwhile, the story came out because of leaks from the White House, and Hayden said the Trump administration has a point when they say national security is under jeopardy because of such leaks occurring.
"It is very discomforting for me, anybody of my background, and should make all of us as a nation uncomfortable," said Hayden. "We have seen a degree of leaking here in the 120 days of the Trump administration that's unlike any I've seen in the past. I can suggest some reasons for it, some background that may indicate why there's more, but doesn't forgive it or excuse it, it's still wrong, it's still very bad."
However, he admitted that without such revealations, there would be much that the American people don't know, and Michael Flynn would still be Trump's national security adviser.