(CNN) Former CIA Director Michael Hayden drew parallels on Tuesday between the intelligence failures in the lead up to 9/11 and Russian meddling in American affairs through social media in 2016.

Hayden was responding to a CNN story released Monday about a former Obama White House official who said the US government could have thwarted a Russian troll group's attempts to meddle in the 2016 US presidential election. The official, Brett Bruen, who served as the White House director of global engagement from 2013 to 2015, said he warned colleagues on President Barack Obama's National Security Council in 2014 that America would be targeted by Russian trolls.

Watching a segment of Bruen's interview on CNN's "New Day" on Tuesday morning, Hayden said that it reminded him "a bit of pre-9/11."

"I know there are serious differences here. But in terms of the intelligence analysis, pre-9/11, we knew al Qaeda was coming after us, but we thought they were coming after us in terms of US interests overseas, not in the homeland," Hayden said.

Hayden said that similarly in the lead-up to 2016, the intelligence community did not realize that Russian disinformation techniques used in Crimea could also be exported to, and be effective in, the United States.

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