Americans should not conclude the CIA is working against them with WikiLeaks' allegation Tuesday the agency uses software to infiltrate and spy through TV sets and other devices, Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA and the NSA, told Newsmax TV.
"I'd be careful about how WikiLeaks jumps to conclusions," Hayden told Tuesday's "The Steve Malzberg Show." "I know that Americans use Samsung and Americans use iPhones and so on. Just because you have the ability to work against those kinds of instruments is a very big leap to saying you're working against Americans.
"These products are global, they're international. I think the last thing you would want to have is to let the bad people of the world understand that any particular product or service out there represents a safe haven to the people who would want to do us harm.
"Do you really want a certain product out there to be untouchable . . . [in] intercepting enemy communications? I don't think so."
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WikiLeaks claimed Tuesday that Samsung smart TVs are among the CIA's weapons for surveillance and the agency worked with U.K. intelligence officials to turn microphones in TVs into listening devices.
Hayden, a retired Air Force general and author of "Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror," published by Penguin, said there is a reason WikiLeaks only seems to bare hacked information that pertains to the United States.
"I don't know what good, old Julian Assange is putting out there now, but I'd just tell my fellow countrymen, don't leap to conclusions . . . We're Americans, we're supposed to be skeptical, but don't quickly leap to the conclusions he's leading you to," Hayden told Malzberg.
"I think Julian Assange is an enemy of the United States, so keep that in mind when he tells you something.
"Based upon my life experience, what it looks like [has been leaked] is a gathering of the tactics, techniques, tools, and procedures that good Americans use to do the job you've asked them to do, which is to acquire the communications of people who will us harm."
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