Ex-NSA chief Michael Hayden booed and heckled during CPAC debate after calling himself an 'unrelenting libertarian'

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[h=1]Ex-NSA chief Michael Hayden booed and heckled during CPAC debate after calling himself an 'unrelenting libertarian'[/h]

• Michael Hayden was debating with libertarian judge Andrew Napolitano
• In an audience of primarily conservatives, he said both men were libertarians
• Crowd began heckling Hayden and shouting 'No, you're not!'
• Men were debating privacy and the Constitution's Fourth Amendment

Former National Security Agency chief Michael Hayden was heckled at the Conservative Political Action Conference after he called himself an 'unrelenting libertarian'.
Hayden was at the conference on Friday for a debate with Fox News senior judicial analyst and libertarian judge Andrew Napolitano, which was moderated by Fox Business Network's Lou Dobbs.
At one point in the debate, Hayden, who also used to head the CIA, said: 'Let's talk about facts. The judge is an unrelenting libertarian.' His comment was followed by a large applause from the audience.
But when he added, 'So am I', the crowd booed and laughed, with many people shouting 'No, you're not!'

 

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Former NSA and CIA chief Michael Hayden (right) debated the rights of the Fourth Amendment with libertarian judge Andrew Napolitano (left) at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday. Hayden was heckled after claiming that like Napolitano, he, too, was an 'unrelenting libertarian'

 

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All applause from the conservative audience stopped as Hayden gave reasoning into why he considers himself a libertarian.
'I am an unrelenting libertarian who's also responsible for four decades of his life for another important part of [the Constitution], the part that says "provide for the common defense,"' he said.

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The majority of the conservative audience members appeared to support Fox News analyst Napolitano's viewpoints (file photo)

Hayden's comments came after Napolitano told the audience they should be 'outraged' by NSA's surveillance programs, first revealed in 2012 by whistleblowers including Edward Snowden.
Napolitano warned the crowd that the government had the power to turn on people's phones, read texts and listen to conversations.
'We are in a twilight era where freedom is diminishing,' the judge told the audience.


Hayden said in his followup: 'If NSA were even capable of doing what the judge has outlined for you we wouldn't have be having a debate here today. There would be nothing to argue about.'


Later into the debate, Napolitano asked the former NSA chief: 'Does the head of NSA have the constitutional legal authority to move the line between privacy and surveillance?'


Several audience members began yelling 'no', and Dobbs turned to Hayden, telling him the crowd response was 'a clue how they'd like you to answer'.


'The accusations fit on a bumper sticker but reality takes a little bit longer,' Hayden said, going on to say that while targeting foreigners, the NSA is required to withhold information collected about US citizens, according to the Daily Dot.


'So in other words, foreign terrorist, "Abu Akmad bin Bad Guy" was talking to a known US person. We minimize the US identity to protect your privacy, unless of course, the identity of the US is absolutely essential to the intelligence value of the intercept in the first place,' he said.




Hayden downplayed NSA's spy programs throughout the debate while side-stepping Napolitano's main claim - that seizing an American's property unreasonably, through correspondence and data, without probable cause, violates the Constitution's Fourth Amendment.

 

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Hayden failed to respond to Napolitano's main argument, that seizing an American's property without probable cause violates the Constitution's Fourth Amendment. The former NSA chief has said in the past that privacy is a line that people must 'continuously negotiate'

At one point, Hayden said the debate was 'beginning to feel like an away game'.
This is not the first time Hayden as spoken out about the NSA, rights of privacy and hacking.
In January during a speech at Washington and Lee University, the former chief discussed what constitutes as a probable search under the Fourth Amendment, according to The Atlantic.
Hayden said that Americans have a duty to reveal their ingoing and outgoing calls as well as their internet activity.
'Privacy is the line we continuously negotiate between ourselves as unique creatures of God and ourselves as social animals,' he said.
'In the first category we have a right to keep things to ourselves. And in the second category we have a responsibility to reveal things about ourselves to the community for the greater good.

 

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[h=1]Rand Paul comes out ahead in CPAC straw poll AGAIN, picking up 2016 momentum with US red-meat right wingers and libertarians[/h]

• Kentucky senator has now won three years in a row, aided by a cadre of young and libertarian-leaning attendees
• Conservative Political Action Conference poll winners went on to become presidential nominees in the next election just 20 per cent of the time
• Three-day event drew thousands of conservatives and libertarian-minded Republicans to a Maryland resort hotel
• Results tend to skew young and right-wing, unlike the older and more moderate center of the Republican electorate
• Mitt Romney has won more CPAC straw polls than anyone else, though, triumphing in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2012
• Voters said the economy and foreign policy were their top concerns; more than four-fifths chose repealing Obamacare as their 'deal-breaker' issue

Kentucky Senator Ron Paul emerged as American conservatives' favorite presidential hopeful on Saturday for the third year in a row, following the three-day Conservative Political Action Conference near Washington, D.C.
The freshman lawmaker bested a field of an astonishing 17 governors, senators, business executives and other assorted long-shot maybe-candidates, finishing with 25.7 per cent of the vote. Conference attendees could also choose a none-of-the-above option or write-in another choice.
Paul, the expected winner of the contest, said in a statement that he was 'humbled by the enthusiastic support and encouragement' he received from 'constitutional conservatives' who propelled him to victory.
'The Constitutional Conservatives of our party have spoken in a loud and clear voice today,' he said. 'I plan on doing my part and I hope you will join me as I continue to make the GOP a bigger, better and bolder party.'

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Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has won the Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll, defeating 16 other potential Republican presidential candidates

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ROCK THE VOTE: Conservatives could vote over a three-day period for their favorite politician in advance of the 2016 Republican primary season

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FIELD OF SEVENTEEN! The GOP's deep bench showed up in the straw poll, with nearly a dozen and a half potential candidates' names showing up on a digital ballot

A surging Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker took second place with 21.4 per cent, followed by Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
Cruz's 11.5 per cent was just one-tenth of a point better than Carson's showing. Cruz placed second in 2014.
Bush's received 8.3 per cent of the votes. His name was announced first as the 5th-place finisher on Saturday at the event's closing session, drawing a cascade of boos from activists who had remained to hear the results.
When voters were asked to pick their top two candidates, Paul's lead shrank to just 2 percentage points.
The poll numbers, based on 3,007 votes, are not thought to be a solid indicator of how the Republican Party will vote next year in primary elections and state caucuses that determine who the presidential nominee will be.
That's because CPAC is a gathering of hard-core conservatives and libertarian-leaning Republicans, not the GOP's more moderate center.

 

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[h=3]2015 CPAC STRAW POLL RESULTS[/h]25.7% Sen. Rand Paul
21.4% Gov. Scott Walker
11.5% Sen. Ted Cruz
11.4% Dr. Ben Carson
8.3% Former Gov. Jeb Bush
4.3% Former Sen. Rick Santorum
3.7% Sen. Marco Rubio
3.5% Donald Trump
3.0% Carly Fiorina
2.8% Gov. Chris Christie
1.1% Former Gov. Rick Perry
0.9% Gov. Bobby Jindal
0.8% Former Gov. Sarah Palin
0.3% Former Gov. Mike Huckabee
0.3% Former Ambassador John Bolton
0.1% Sen. Lindsey Graham
0.1% Former Gov. George Pataki
1.0% Undecided
0.7% Other