Former CIA and NSA Director General Michael Hayden is advising independent presidential candidate Evan McMullin on national security matters, the candidate revealed in an interview on Monday.

“General Hayden has been very helpful, and I greatly respect him,” McMullin told Jewish Insider in a wide-ranging interview. “I think he’s got one of the greatest national security strategic minds in the country, and he’s been very supportive. There are others too that I imagine will be public about their engagement with my efforts.”

Last week, Hayden said he will be voting for a third-party candidate over the Republican and Democratic nominees for president. “I’m uncomfortable with the nominee of both of the major political parties,” Hayden said on John Catsimatidis’s radio show, “The Cats Roundtable,” on AM970 in New York. “I get it. Somebody is going to win, but, you know, no matter who it is, for these two, I’m hoping they don’t think they’re sweeping into office with some powerful mandate. And for people like me that decide to vote for some other choice, might deny them that sense of mandate, which would make, I think, things ever worse.”

Hayden is among fifty top Republican national security officials, mainly former aides for President George W. Bush, who issued a joint statement saying they will not vote for Donald Trump. “From a foreign policy perspective, Donald Trump is not qualified to be President and Commander-in-Chief,” they wrote in a letter earlier this month. “Indeed, we are convinced that he would be a dangerous president and would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.”

McMullin said that some of the signatories are advising him and some have indicated that he can count on their support, but he wouldn’t name them. “These are good men and women who put the interest of the country first,” he said. “They understand, like me, having served in the capacity they have, that Donald Trump is a true threat to our republic given his admiration for authoritarianism, his embracing of racial hatred, and his alignment with Vladimir Putin.”

The full interview with McMullin will be published in Tuesday’s Daily Kickoff.