Veteran journalist Bob Woodward said Sunday he recently learned the unverified Trump dossier appeared in an early draft of a U.S. intelligence community assessment on Russian election interference.

During a discussion on "Fox News Sunday," Woodward suggested its inclusion was at the behest of the Central Intelligence Agency, but it was ultimately taken out after being reviewed by intelligence experts.

"What I found out recently, which was really quite surprising, the dossier, which really is got a lot of garbage in it and Mueller found that to be the case, early in building the intelligence community assessment on Russian interference in an early draft, they actually put the dossier on page two in kind of a breakout box," Woodward said in a panel moderated by host Chris Wallace.

"I think itwas the CIA pushing this," he added. "Real intelligence experts looked at this and said no, this is not intelligence, this is garbage and they took it out. But in this process the idea that they would include something like that in one of the great stellar intelligence assessments as Mueller also found out is highly questionable. Needs to be investigated."

[Related: Barr: Mueller report makes 'clear' Russia meddled in 2016 election]

Woodward's suggestion that the CIA was pushing for the inclusion of the dossier in the intelligence assessment comes nearly a month after Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said he was told former CIA Director John Brennan "insisted" the dossier be included in the report. "BREAKING: A high-level source tells me it was Brennan who insisted that the unverified and