( CNN) General Michael Hayden told CNN's Fareed Zakaria that his opinion about the usefulness of special investigations had changed since FBI Director James Comey was fired.

Comey was in the middle of investigating possible ties between Trump's presidential campaign and Russia's interference in the 2016 election when he was dismissed last Tuesday on the recommendation of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

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Hayden, a four-star general and former NSA and CIA chief, told Zakaria that up until Comey's firing he had been cynical of special investigations as a whole, confessing to a real “dislike” of “special structures, special prosecutors and efforts and so on.