MR. RUSSERT:You were not at the CIA on September 11th , 2001 and the successive months after that. You were at the National Security Agency . But looking back at what the American people were told about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq , was there a colossal intelligence failure?
GEN. HAYDEN:Yeah, we got it wrong. All right? And although I wasn't at the CIA , I was in the room when that National Intelligence Estimate was approved by the community -- it wasn't just a CIA document -- and frankly, Tim , I voted yes. It was my belief that what we were saying in that document was correct.
MR. RUSSERT:Why did you get it wrong?
GEN. HAYDEN:Lots of reasons. This, this has certainly been gone over by whole generation of American intelligence officers . There are a couple of narratives. I can suggest a few to you right now. Number one, maybe momentum in terms of what we knew about Iraq , what we had learned about Iraq . And even though our more recent reporting had been very thin, we still kind of carried the old conclusions forward without, frankly, holding them up enough to the light in order to see whether or not they were still valid. I, I'll tell you this. I've seen since then, I've seen estimates that we've had with high confidence turn to medium confidence. And I'd say to our..., "Why is that now medium confidence? Nothing's changed." And, and the answer is, "Yes, but the information on which it has been based has aged off, and therefore we're reducing our confidence level ." So we've gone to school on this.