Public wishes about how to balance privacy and security will have to be evaluated in light of the shooting deaths of two men outside a "Draw Muhammad" free-speech event in Garland, Texas, on Sunday, former CIA and NSA director Gen. Michael Hayden tells
Newsmax TV.
"You've got this difficult decision to make: when does free thought and free speech cross the line into something that's actionable by American law enforcement?" Hayden said Monday on "Newsmax Prime," hosted by J.D. Hayworth.
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One of the two men involved in the attempted attack, Elton Simpson, 30, of Arizona, had been on the
FBI's radar for eight years. Simpson and his roommate, Nadir Soofi, 24, were killed by police after they opened fire on a security guard, wounding him in the ankle.
The "totality of circumstances" should determine where the line is drawn between privacy and security, Hayden said.
"We may actually discover that we're drawing the line too conservatively and that we should be more forward-leaning with our action," he said. "We'll let the facts take us there if they will."
Hayden suggested that Americans follow the British approach to terrorism.
"The British, with that stiff-upper-lip tradition, say, 'Keep calm and carry on.' I would just add to that an American codicil: 'Keep calm, carry on, but if you see something, say something.'"
Americans don't need to change their lifestyles but do need to appreciate that it's now a different kind of world, Hayden said.
Despite criticism of NSA overreach from some quarters, the agency's former boss doesn't see anything wrong with how information is collected, he told Hayworth.
He understands the concerns, Hayden said, but added: "Of all the times when we might want to make it more difficult or more cumbersome to find the terrorists in the United States, this is not that time because of the kind of things that happened in Texas yesterday."
The NSA data-collection program guards constitutional safeguards and is lawful, Hayden said. If data collection is decreased, it must be done with the understanding "that in order to make a large part of the population feel a little more comfortable, we're going to make all the population just a little less safe."
Hayden responded to former CIA Deputy Director
Michael Morell, who in a new book criticizes Republicans in Congress and the White House over the politicization of the Benghazi, Libya, embassy attacks in 2012.
Hayden said he recommends Morell's book and agrees with him that the CIA shouldn't be in the business of putting out talking points for elected officials.
"CIA uses intelligence talk. Talking points are political talk," Hayden said. "You shouldn't even do the first draft of the talking points for the political talk."
Despite speculation that Morell plans to sign on as Hillary Clinton's intelligence chief if she is elected president, Hayden said Morell speaks his mind, adding, "I don't think he's going out of his way to please anyone."