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Retired Gen. Michael Hayden, who served as both the director of the NSA and the CIA, said Monday that some of President Trumps rhetoric on North Korea could lead to great danger.

A very tough, but a very precise statement, Hayden told CNNs New Day, referring to the statementSecretary of Defense James MattisJames Norman MattisThis week: Harvey aid at top of long to-do list as Congress returns Week ahead in defense: Senators pick up work on defense bill | Briefings on North Korea, Afghan troop surge Chinese Ambassador: China will never allow chaos and war on the Korean Peninsula MORE made on Sunday afterNorth Korea saidthat it successfully tested a miniaturized hydrogen bomb that can be placed on an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM).

Which is a little bit different than some of the things the president has been allowing himself to say, Alisyn, which have been very tough, but very imprecise, and that could lead to great danger, Hayden told host Alisyn Camerota.

Secretary Mattis had very strong language, but it was about a North Korean threat, not a North Korean capability, Hayden explained.

In other words, Alisyn, I think he was trying to make a distinction between were willing to pre-empt an imminent threat from North Korea but were not willing, its not our policy at least not yet, to conduct a preventive war to prevent the North Koreans from acquiring that kind of capability.

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Former CIA, NSA head: Trump's tough N. Korea talk 'could lead to ... - The Hill

While condemning the leak of classified information, the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security Committee today said that because a secret NSA document was posted online yesterday "we now have verified information" showing that Russian intelligence services were in fact behind last year's cyber-assault on the U.S. election.

"In any other circumstances this would be an earthquake," but because of "everything" going on in Washington it is a matter that has not received the attention it deserves, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, said at the start of a committee hearing. "This was Russia ... this was an international attempt to impact the elections of the United States of America."

Her comments come one day after the FBI arrested a 25-year-old government contractor, Reality Winner of Augusta, Georgia, for allegedly leaking the document to reporters at the online publication The Intercept.

The document, posted online just hours before the announcement of Winner's arrest, laid out in stark detail how Russian hackers allegedly "executed cyber espionage operations" against outside vendors dealing with voter-related information.

It's unclear exactly why Winner allegedly searched for secret documents related to the election, printed out a highly-classified NSA document and then mailed it to a media outlet. But court documents may offer a glimpse.

In late March, Winner allegedly used a Gmail account to contact The Intercept, and she "appeared to request transcripts of a podcast," according to court documents.

Little more than a week earlier, The Intercept hosted a podcast online looking at, among other things, the public outcry over Russia's alleged collusion with associates of President Donald Trump and the Kremlin's alleged interference in last year's presidential election.

Host Jeremy Scahill said "there is a tremendous amount of hysterics" and "a lot of premature conclusions being drawn around all of this Russia stuff," but "there's not a lot of hard evidence to back it up."

As a guest on the podcast, Intercept reporter Glenn Greenwald agreed, saying that while "it's very possible" Russia was behind election-related hacks last year, "we still haven't seen any evidence for it."

At the Senate hearing today, McCaskill said the NSA document allegedly leaked by Winner now offers such evidence, and she pressed the hearing's witness, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly, to make sure his department takes appropriate steps to protect voting-related systems in the future.

Kelly said he couldn't confirm or deny any specific information "about what actually took place" last year, particularly because the intelligence behind it is so highly classified.

In January, the U.S. intelligence community issued a report calling Russia's alleged meddling in last year's presidential campaign "a significant escalation" of efforts "to undermine the U.S.-led liberal democratic order."

"We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S. presidential election," the report said. "We also assess Putin and the Russian Government aspired to help [Donald] Trumps election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary [Hillary] Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him."

The Kremlin has repeatedly denied those conclusions and President Donald Trump and others in his administration have similarly questioned whether Russia was truly behind last year's hack of the Democratic National Committee and subsequent attempts to infiltrate election-related systems.

Speaking in Washington last month, however, the NSA's recently-departed deputy director wholly rejected such skepticism, insisting there is "no question it was the Russians."

"NSA had a huge role in making that determination," the former deputy director of the agency, Richard Ledgett, said. "There is no question that thats what it was. I cant lay out for you all of the reasons for that, because there's a lot of really sensitive sources that led to that, but it was definitely the Russians."

Ledgett said such conclusions are based on "a variety of different good sources of information."

"It's more than just looking at the code. It's more than just looking at the targets. It's more than looking at the tactics and the techniques and procedures," and U.S. agencies "have a really good ability to do attribution" thanks to the intelligence work of both the U.S. government and allies around the world, he said.

Ledgett, who stepped down from the NSA in April, was speaking at Georgetown Law Schools annual Cybersecurity Law Institute.

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Leaked NSA document is proof of Russian election hacking, top ...

Uncle Sam's intelligence agencies have embarked on the next stage of their plan to retain spying powers over US citizens: getting Donald Trump onboard.

Knowing what we do about Donald's approach to policy issues, it seems unlikely that the American president is aware of what is going on. But somehow he has been persuaded to revive a civil liberties oversight body that was torn apart for criticizing a controversial spying program that requires reauthorization by Congress at the end of the year.

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) has been dead for over a year. After it concluded that several of the NSA's spying programs were unconstitutional back in 2014, the intelligence services set about shutting it down. And they succeeded.

In 2016, Congress passed legislation that formally prohibited the board from reviewing covert activity, and gave politicians budget control over the board, requiring it to report directly to legislators.

In response, most of the PCLOB's staff and board resigned. Between January and March that year, three board members quit and a fourth's term was not renewed. That left a single person Elisebeth Collins to sit as chair.

Collins' position was renewed until 2020 with the entry of the Trump Administration in order to keep the PCLOB in existence, but the board has not done a single piece of work since its former chair David Medine resigned in March 2016. With no quorum of board members present, and no executive director, the PCLOB has been in stasis for 18 months.

This month however and on the same day that the NSA started a PR campaign to retain mass spying laws under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) President Trump suddenly decided to nominate a new chair to the PCLOB. (The PCLOB has a few choice words [PDF] about Section 702.)

"Adam I Klein of the District of Columbia to be a Member and Chairman of the Privacy & Civil Liberties Oversight Board," said the announcement, buried at the bottom of a four-appointee announcement that was put out with the trash on Friday.

It then lists Klein's achievements: "Mr Klein is the Robert M Gates Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, where his research centers on the intersection of national security policy and law. He previously served as a law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia of the US Supreme Court and Judge Brett M Kavanaugh of the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. He has also worked on national security policy at the RAND Corporation..." and so on.

In the context of the PCLOB however, what Mr Klein is renowned for is his defense of Section 702 of the FISA Act.

He even wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal just last month that defended the most controversial aspect of the spying program: the ability of the FBI to search a vast database of information on US citizens that was compiled using Section 702 a law that explicitly notes it is only to be used for foreign intelligence targets and exempts US citizens.

Klein claims that, despite the law, "keeping officials from searching this data would make it more difficult to prevent homegrown terrorist attacks."

His choice as chair of the PCLOB goes against everything the body is supposed to represent, and is akin to Trump's choice of climate-change denier Scott Pruitt as the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, or Rick Perry as head of the Department of Energy after he publicly vowed to eliminate the government agency.

The NSA and FBI also know exactly what they will be getting with Klein heading up the PCLOB: a civil liberties fig leaf to continue their spying of US citizens using legislation explicitly designed not to include US citizens.

The legislation in question has to be reauthorized by Congress before the end of the year, and has already become a major political wrangle in the corridors of power. Many lawmakers, tech companies and civil liberties groups have argued for specific changes to make to the law to remove its worst aspects.

With the revival of the defunct PCLOB and the proposed appointment of Klein as its chair, it is clear that the powers-that-be already have a strategy in place to retain their powers, and are following through on it.

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NSA enters stage two of its spying revival plan: Getting Trump onboard - The Register

An Air Force veteran told FBI agents that she had leaked classified U.S. documents, but a legal technicality may prevent prosecutors from using the confession as evidence in her upcoming trial, the Associated Press reports.

Reality Winner, a 25-year-old former Air Force linguist, stands charged of copying a classified report and mailing it to a leak-friendly news site. Winner was working as a government contractor in Augusta, Georgia, when the leak occurred in early May. She held a top secret security clearance at the time.

Winner later admitted to a pair of FBI agents that she had leaked the documents, according to a criminal complaint filed June 5 in the U.S.s Southern Georgia District Court. The two agents were executing a search warrant at Winners apartment when the confession was made.

[Winner] admitted removing the classified intelligence reporting from her office space, retaining it, and mailing it from Augusta, Georgia, to the news outlet, which she knew was not authorized to receive or possess the documents, according to a Department of Justice statement released on June 5.

Winners defense attorneys are now asking a federal judge to suppress any comments she made during the interview because the agents never gave her a Miranda warning, which law enforcement officials must read to criminal suspects in custody. But Winner had not been formally arrested at that point.

However, according to the AP, in a court motion filed on Aug. 29, an attorney for Winner said that she believed she was under arrest as she was being questioned in her apartment, noting that the agents were standing in front of the door.

Winner was never told she was free to leave, nor was she advised as to her arrest status, Winners attorneys wrote. Indeed, when she specifically asked whether she was under arrest, the agents told her they did not know the answer to that yet.

As of Aug. 31, the judge had not yet ruled on the defense motion, nor had prosecutors filed a reply. But on Aug. 30, U.S. Magistrate Judge Brian K. Epps agreed to postpone Winners trial, which was due to begin in October. The case has now been rescheduled for March 2018.

According to the AP, Winner has pleaded not guilty to charges that she illegally retained and transmitted national defense information. And while authorities have not publicly discussed what that information was or to whom Winner transmitted it to, it seems fairly obvious.

The Intercept reported in May that it had obtained a classified National Security Agency report suggesting Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last Novembers presidential election.

The Intercept said the NSA report was dated May 5, which is the same date that appeared on the document Winner is charged with leaking.

Soon after Winners arrest, The Intercept announced that its parent company, First Look Media, had decided to provide independent support for her legal defense, and argued that the leak highlighted vulnerabilities in the U.S. election system and [provided] vital context for the current debate over Russian interference in the election.

Winner could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

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Air Force Vet Admitted To Leaking NSA Documents, But Her Confession Might Not Count In Court - Task & Purpose

LORD INGLEWOOD of Hutton in the Forest, Penrith, Cumbria, has been announced as the new president of the National Sheep Association.

He takes over the position from His Grace The Duke of Montrose who handed over the reins at the recent NSA AGM in Ballymena, County Antrim.

As well as being a farmer and landowner in Cumbria with both upland and lowland farming interests, Lord Inglewood is actively involved as a member of the House of Lords. Among other commitments, he is also president of the Uplands Alliance and fulfils an influential role within the Livestock Auctioneers Association.

On his appointment as NSA president, Lord Inglewood said: At a moment when UK agriculture is under review as never before, I am delighted to support those in the sheep sector an integral part of livestock farming at this crucial moment. I am looking forward to working closely with NSA in the near future.

Speaking at the AGM, NSA chief executive Phil Stocker said: The role of NSA president is an essential one for the organisation and its influence can have a significant bearing on the future for the sheep industry here in the UK.

Our outgoing president, His Grace The Duke of Montrose, held this position for six years and has been an incredible ambassador for NSA, opening many doors for us and supporting a good number of NSA events around the country. I would like to give a huge thank you to the Duke for all he has done, and at the same time welcome Lord Inglewood into this role. I look forward to involving him in NSAs work during this crucial time.

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NSA welcomes new association president - The Scottish Farmer