Former Bush intel chief commends Obama's handling of terror threats

President Barack Obama received praise for his handling of national security matters from an unlikely place Sunday.

The former director of national intelligence under President George W. Bush commended the Obama administration for its pursuit of terrorists.

"Interesting point I would make just for the sake of the listeners here, as [ex-CIA Director General Michael Hayden] and I served in the previous administration and criticized for being aggressive and so on and there was a lot of rhetoric during the political campaign for electing new representatives," Mike McConnell told CNN's Candy Crowley.

"My observation is the new administration has been as aggressive, if not more aggressive in pursuing these issues because they're real," he added.

"And you commend them for that?" Crowley asked.

"I do commend them for that," McConnell.

Appearing in the same interview on CNN Sunday, former Bush CIA director Michael Hayden warned that terror threats are becoming more difficult to defend against.

"Our security services have actually gotten quite good against the traditional kind of threat, rather complex, slow-moving plot organized very likely from the tribal region of Pakistan," Hayden said.

"The new flavor of threat is more likely to come from a franchise than from al Qaeda main in Pakistan," he continued.

"[It's] more likely than in the past to come from someone who has every reason to be in the United States, has American personhood, whether it's a green card or as a citizen. That's a witch's brew and, as you suggest, it's much more difficult for us to defend against those kinds of attacks," he said.

This video is from CNN's State of the Union, broadcast Dec. 26, 2010.

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