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It is an incongruous setting for talk about homegrown radicalism, drone attacks and whether the West has become complacent about terrorism.
While the presentations are officially “not for attribution,” speakers are happy to talk if tracked down poolside or standing in line at the Lido deck’s expanse of buffets.
Oversimplified, the message includes a warning that terrorism is growing among what they believe is a complacent public, that agents are more “risk adverse,” which could hurt intelligence gathering and
that lawyers who fight for the human rights of terrorism suspects and unfair criticism by the “left wing media” are putting the U.S. at risk.
Discussions could become animated, as neither intelligence leader was immune to controversy.
Hayden, a retired Air Force general and longest serving director of the NSA, was at the heart of the warrantless surveillance controversy. Under Goss’s leadership in 2005, the CIA destroyed videos of the harsh interrogation techniques of terrorism suspects."