Former CIA Director Michael Hayden criticized President Barack Obama’s decision in 2009 to release internal memos defending CIA interrogators’ harsh methods. Hayden said Tuesday that Obama’s move, based on the shifting political policies of his administration, now hinders CIA officers who now fear for their careers, according to a San Francisco Examiner report quoting Fox News.

“Every agency officer today will say, ‘I’ve seen this movie. I used to think this was a contract with the American government. I have been taught this is a contract with an administration. And this contract has the half-life of one election cycle in the American political system,’ That is a very bad place for the espionage system to be.”

Hayden, a retired four-star Air Force general who was director of the National Security Agency under Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush, said interrogation procedures CIA officers used on captured combatants were essential and successful in the war on terror.

“It was effective,” Hayden observed. “It did what we expected it to do.”

The CIA no longer interrogates suspected terrorists in the wake of the Justice Department’s release of the memos. That responsibility now falls to the FBI under the direct supervision of a member of the Obama administration.