Hayden's motivation for selling drones is ignoble

Retired Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of both the NSA and CIA, 
has been great advocate for drone attacks, which have killed more civilians than suspected radicals. He has been making the media rounds over the last few days, discussing and defending some of the most emblematic policies of the post-9/11 era in an effort to promote his new book. 

Last weekend, Hayden spent some 2,000 words defending one example of a policy taken to the edge: the Obama administration’s embrace of drone warfare and so-called targeted killing (what many describe as a euphemism for assassination). In an article for the New York Times op-ed page, Hayden strived to present the role drones play in U.S. counter-terrorism missions as inherently fallible, but on the whole, effective, careful, and necessary.

“The program is not perfect. No military program is. But here is the bottom line: It works,” Hayden wrote. “I think it fair to say that the targeted killing program has been the most precise and effective application of firepower in the history of armed conflict.”

The op-ed was met with pointed criticism. Micah Zenko, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a noted expert on the role of drones in U.S. counterterrorism operations, published a thorough point-by-point analysis of Hayden’s specific claims the following day.

Citing averages from three NGOs that track U.S. drone strikes, Zenko noted that “as director of the CIA Hayden personally authorized an estimated 48 drone strikes, which killed 532 people, 144 of whom were civilians.” 

Jim Naureckas is the editor of Fair.org unmasks Hayden's motivation for denying the truth. You can read his piece by click here.
The fact is: Hayden has served from 2010 until 2015 on the board of Alion, a company that in 2012 “was awarded a $24 million contract to develop the US Navy’s unmanned and automatic weapons systems.” Alion is not required to disclose compensation for its board members.