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John Brennan speaks Monday after President Barack Obama nominated him to become the next director of the CIA.
John Brennan hasn’t always been a bureaucrat, working out of a comfortable office at the White House. An Arabic speaker and Saudi expert, the 57-year-old CIA director-designate has at various points in his career confronted Iranian intelligence officials and Saudi princes, briefed President Bill Clinton, camped out with Bedouins in the Arabian desert and helped create the agency that ultimately became National Counter Terrorism Center.
Known now as President Barack Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, Brennan spent most of his career in the CIA.
A working-class kid from Hudson County, N.J., best known for its political intrigue, Brennan decided at a young age to apply for a job in international intrigue after graduating from Fordham University -- and reading a classified ad in the New York Times seeking recruits for the CIA.
He joined the agency in 1980, and for the next 25 years he worked for the CIA, both in Washington and overseas. He got his big career break when he was noticed by George Tenet in the mid-1990s. He was at the time delivering the agency’s security briefings to then-President Clinton.
Tenet was then intelligence adviser to the National Security Council and met with Brennan regularly on intelligence matters. When Tenet then became deputy CIA Director in 1995, he made Brennan his executive assistant. Then, when John Deutch abruptly quit as CIA director in 1996, Tenet succeeded him first on an interim basis, then permanently. Brennan, who was in Saudi Arabia from 1996-'99, returned to become Tenet's chief of staff, his gatekeeper on the CIA's seventh floor.
Obama taps Brennan to be next CIA director
Brennan's knowledge of Arabic and Arab cultures made him indispensable to Tenet in many ways and, in 1998, Tenet appointed him station chief in Saudi Arabia.
Work in Iran, with Saudis
In his memoir, "At the Center of the Storm," Tenet recounts a number of incidents where Brennan used his wits to get a message across.
Perhaps the most memorable took place in the late 1990s, when attacks against Western targets by Hezbollah and its chief backer, the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), were causing problems for Washington in the Mideast. The CIA decided to launch a "disruption campaign" to let both know the U.S. was aware of their actions, and try to embarrass the Iranians.
As part of the campaign, agency officers would approach MOIS officers on the street or wherever they could get close and ask them if "they would like to come to work for us or sell us information," as Tenet put it.
"In one memorable example," Tenet recounts, "John Brennan, our liaison to the Saudis, handled the local MOIS head himself.
"John walked up to his car, knocked on the window, and said, 'Hello, I’m from the U.S. Embassy, and I’ve got something to tell you.' As John tells the story, the guy got out of the car, claimed that Iran was a peace-loving country, then jumped back in the car and sped away.
"Just being seen with some of our people might cause MOIS officers to fall under suspicion by their own agency. The cold pitches undoubtedly ruined some careers, and maybe even lives, but also occasionally paid off in actual intelligence dividends. It couldn’t happen to a nastier bunch of people."
President Obama is expected to announce his choices for Secretary of Defense and CIA Director later today. NBC's Tracie Potts reports.
Brennan also had to deal with often-recalcitrant Saudi leaders who were not as aggressive in cracking down on Islamic militants as the U.S. wanted.
Tenet wrote that in 1998, the Saudis had thwarted an al-Qaida operation in the kingdom. Their intelligence serviced had learned that operatives for the terror group were planning to smuggle four Sagger anti-tank missiles into the country from Yemen. What troubled the CIA was that the Saudi intelligence service had not informed the U.S. government of the plot. Even more troubling was the timing of the plot – just days before then-Vice President Gore was set to visit the kingdom. It didn't take much analysis to persuade the CIA that the missiles were part of an assassination plot.
The lack of cooperation set off alarm bells at CIA headquarters in Langley, Va. If the Saudis weren't going to inform the CIA about such an explicit threat, what would they inform the U.S. about?
Brennan was instructed to meet with Prince Turki bin Faisal, then head of Saudi intelligence. Turki pleaded ignorance and so Brennan suggested that Tenet pay a visit and play a bit of hard ball with the Saudis.
At Brennan's suggestion, Tenet met with the late Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the royal in charge of security. After what seemed to be an interminable soliloquy by the prince on the two countries' "special relationship," Tenet interrupted and, to get Nayef’s attention, moved in close and put his hand on the prince's knee, something one does not do with a Saudi royal.
Tenet then delivered his message to Nayef. "I let him go at last, but I assured him that I would be back the next week, and every week after that if necessary, to ensure that the flow of terrorism-related information between U.S. and Saudi officials was timely and unencumbered," he wrote.
Within a week, Brennan was given a comprehensive written report on the Sagger episode by the Saudis, for which he expressed profound gratitude.
Enhanced interrogation 'saved lives'
In other negotiations between Tenet and Arab leaders, Brennan was often one of two or three advisers in the CIA director's party.
In one memorable meeting with Yasser Arafat, Tenet writes that he had Brennan vet a proposed peace agreement between the Palestinian Authority and Israel before presenting it to the Bush White House, wanting his expert eye to review it.
After Brennan’s return to Washington from Saudi Arabia 2002, Tenet made him deputy executive director of the CIA. The job took him out of intelligence gathering and into administration. As the No. 2 in the CIA's administrative office, Brennan was essentially "deputy mayor" of the agency, "making the trains run on time" for the worldwide operation, as one former Tenet aide put it.
In that role, he helped set up the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, the predecessor to the National Counter Terrorism Center. Brennan built the unit from the ground up, finding the building, setting up security procedures and staffing it with analysts from across the intelligence community. His aggressiveness in staffing didn't sit well with those who lost analysts. In his memoir, "Hard Measures" Jose Rodriguez, then the director of the CIA's Counter Terrorism Center, accused Brennan of "ripping most, if not all, of the top CT (counter terror) analysts out of CTC."
But after creating the organization, he was passed over for director of the NCTC and left the government in 2006, founding The Analysis Corp., an intelligence contractor with offices near the NCTC offices. In 2008, he joined Barack Obama's presidential campaign as intelligence adviser.
There's no indication Brennan played a role in development of the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques," which were established in 2002 and 2003 while he was in the CIA's administrative office.
Brennan later said he opposed some of the most egregious interrogation techniques. Waterboarding, for instance, was "not going to be allowed under an Obama presidency," he told The Washington Times in 2008, just before the presidential election.
But when President-elect Barack Obama floated Brennan’s name to be CIA director, controversy over the enhanced interrogation techniques was increasing and Brennan came under attack from the left. Although his fingerprints weren't on the memos that established the interrogation program, his tacit support for them became a problem. Glenn Greenwald, writing for Salon.com, called Brennan "an ardent supporter of torture" and "one of the most emphatic advocates" for enhanced surveillance powers.
Opponents of his nomination also pointed to an interview with Harry Smith, then of CBS News, in September 2007.
Brennan defended the techniques as necessary. "There (has) been a lot of information that has come out from these interrogation procedures that the agency has in fact used against real hard-core terrorists. It has saved lives," he told Smith emphatically. "And let’s not forget, these are hardened terrorists who have been responsible for 9/11, who have shown no remorse for the deaths of 3,000 innocents."
In the interview, Brennan also defended Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who in his Senate confirmation hearing had refused to call the enhanced interrogation techniques “torture.”
'Tireless,' 'legendary'
The criticism took its toll, and less than three weeks after the election, Brennan withdrew his name from consideration.
"It has been immaterial to the critics that I have been a strong opponent of many of the policies of the Bush administration, such as the pre-emptive war in Iraq and coercive interrogation tactics, to include waterboarding," he said in a Nov. 25, 2008, letter to Obama.
Instead, Obama named him his counterterrorism adviser. In that role, he pushed hard for finding al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden and originally was a champion of the CIA’s drone program in Pakistan, which has become a centerpiece of Obama’s anti-terror operations there. But in recent months, according to several reports, he was leading a drive to put more controls on targeting, among other things.
While Brennan has his critics inside and outside the agency, none questions his work ethic and toughness.
As Obama said Monday, “In all this work, John has been tireless. People here in the White House work hard, but John is legendary, even in the White House, for working hard.”
As for his toughness, one former colleague recalled that while working at the White House, Brennan had a hip replaced on a Monday and was back at work on Thursday. The colleague said he was told that the next time Brennan went in for a hip replacement operation, the driver who took him to the hospital asked if he should wait.
Robert Windrem is a senior investigative producer for NBC News.
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Leave a Comment:
Great pick!
If you wanna catch a terrorist you have to think like a terrorist.
And plus torture always produces the best information!
oh yes, the famed AIG bailout. seems AIG will now sue the US government now for violating AIG's 5th amendment rights for $25 billion, way to go obama.
Musical Chairs continues at the white house with the Big O conducting. Nothing new here. Same game different player.
I wondered why the Senate has to approve any of the POTUS' cabinet.. does the POTUS get to weed out the idiots on staff to each senator..
maxgiver, did you just move to the U.S.?
NBC will go through any length to sell the administraion's agenda and nominees to the public. The story here is a joke, kid's fairy tales that do not establish a person's "toughness" or credibility for the job. Obama needs to select qualified candidates who can perform the important positions he is nominating for - not just ideologically qualified cadidates.
It's hypocritical to be against: the only thing that can stop a bad guy with
a gun is a good guy with a gun,and be for wars which is the only thing that can
stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Yet,this is the mentality
that goes on daily in the Media and in Washington.As Jesus says,to be for one
and not the other.The truth is the only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun
is to take his guns away from him,whether it be by gun control,or by practicing
wars no more,and the Bible says God will do both in Isaiah 2:4: he will Judge
among the nations,and rebuke many people, and they will beat their swords into
plowshares,and their spears into pruning hooks,nation will not lift up sword
against nation,neither will they practice war again.
More have been murdered in the name of God than any other....talk about hypocritical!
Brennan is a huge supporter of Drone attacks....
Interesting thing about Drone attacks....they target individuals....not a military unit.
Is it War or is it Murder?
Judge, jury, and executioner.
This man will at least know about trading camels, having camped out with the Bedouins and all.
James and other losers who think guns are the problem are out to lunch on this issue! Guns do not kill people, people kill people. Get off that high and mighty stool and come downs to earth. The real problem is our current society that has changed over the past 4 decades. We have a bunch of idiots being raised in the past 30 years that have no respect for anyone but themselves.
We have greedy and selfish people running lose and about 2 million more locked up in prisons because of dope and other criminal activity. Parents don't teach their children any manners because most of the parents are idiots and high on drugs or alcohol or whatever. The kids go to school and are not disciplined and they have no respect for the teacher or any adult. There are some who can't even read or write and drop out of school and go on the streets and sell dope or rob citizens to get what they want.
They don't want an education and they would rather steal from others to get what they want. They have no problem buying a pair of sneakers for $200. or $300. but still get their foodstamps and welfare on hard working citizen's salary. Many bums who are supposed to be fathering and guiding these morons but all they want to do is make more women pregnant and not take care of the children.
The women are then on welfare with many children while the old man is out partying or sell dope. Many children are run aways or living on the street. Also because we have a bunch of morons running this country who want to make the people more dependent on the government because they spend like crazy and create massive debt and there are still no jobs for the people to climb out of the mess they are in.
So you liberal nuts who think it is the guns you need to get your head out of it and see what this country is becoming. Do you know of any other country who has more people locked up in prison than we have?
Do you know of any other country who has more love of drugs than we have? The idiots in Congress who want to take away your guns still want to make certain they have someone protecting them or their children from assaults and killings but you and your kids are not going to have the same protection.
I am tired of a bunch of hypocrits who get up on their high horse and try to blame everything on guns. We all know they can reduce the magazine capabilities and the automatic weapons but then they want to eventually take away all of you rights if these imbeciles get a chance.
The current morons running our country are a bunch of morons who are ego maniacs who never want to cut the spending because they do not care about you! They are set for life on their incomes and bucks in offshore accounts. It is not the guns it is the imbeciles and sick idiots who want to kill and if they did not use a gun, they would use a bomb, knife, or whatever.
Stop spending our taxpayer money on BS foreign aid and wasting billions on fraud and corruption in our government and start taking care of the people in this country. Let the other countries take care of their own or shed their blook instead of America shedding its blood. Start taking care of the mentally ill people roaming loose in the country and give them help before they start killing!
Like most 20-somethings, I thought I'd be saddled with debt well into my 30's and possibly 40's, just like my parents. But here I was, just 25 years old, and debt-free.
My mission to wipe out my debt kicked into high gear right after graduation from Arizona State. I had landed my first job as a local reporter in Green Bay, Wisc., making $13 an hour. Not only did I have $20,500 in student loan debt, but I also owed another $6,000 for my 2003 Honda Civic.
I tackled my car loan first since it charged a higher 8% interest rate. I also had six months before I had to start making payments on my five student loans.
After taxes, I was taking home roughly $1,900 a month and spending roughly $1,300 of it on rent, utilities and other living expenses. My goal was to save $1,000 a month -- so I scaled back.
Even while working 10- to 12-hour shifts, I'd skip meals -- eating a protein bar or drinking Ensure shakes to get me through the day. The occasional "splurge" entailed spending $5 at McDonald's for a Sunday breakfast of hotcakes, sausage and two hash browns.
Related: 10 things you'll pay more for in 2013
I used leftover food stamp money from my final months of school to help cover grocery costs and I avoided turning on the heat during the (very long) Green Bay winters to keep my utility bills low.
Within six months, l I finally had enough to pay off my auto loan. The timing was impeccable. Just as I paid off the car, my student loan bills started coming due.
The sobering forecast: for the next 10 years, I was expected to pay the government $235.65 a month.
I realized that making $13 an hour wasn't going to do the trick this time. But then something incredible happened. I landed a job as an associate producer at CNN's headquarters in Atlanta making $25 an hour -- almost double what I was making in Green Bay.
Things were looking up. I was in a new city, had a great job; but despite all that, my student loan debt continued to weigh me down.
So I crunched the numbers and made a plan. I would spend no more than a quarter of my monthly income on essentials -- rent, utilities, phone bills and groceries -- and the rest would be stowed away in savings. Simple pleasures like dining out and partying were put on hold, or rationed when living in solitude became too much to bear.
While my new rent was much higher -- $930 a month in Atlanta compared with $670 in Green Bay -- I cut back on other expenses. I got rid of cable and replaced it with an AT&T U-Verse Internet connection and streaming Netflix account -- slashing my bill from $135 to just $55 a month. An employee discount helped me cut my cell phone bill from $100 to $70 a month. And by living only a couple of miles from the office my commute cost me just $40 a month in gas.
I also became entranced with "super saving." Cooking meats past the expiration date -- yes, a couple of times I paid the price for this -- or rinsing the mold off a pruned vegetable became routine.
Related: Desperately seeking co-signers -- on Craigslist
Grocery shopping became a scavenger hunt to find the cheapest deals. I always paid extra attention to the "temporary price cuts" sections, seeking out the "buy 10 for $10" deals. And I would bring it to the attention of the cashier when my usual box of Pasta Roni had skyrocketed to $1.14 from 99 cents and would hold off on a bundle of bananas because I recalled seeing them at another store for 14 cents each, not 23 cents.
Though I often went to bed hungry, left the heater and air conditioner off during the winter and summer months until my 115-pound body couldn't take it anymore -- I never lost sight of the bigger picture.
It's been well over a month since I have received a notification from my bank that an automatic payment for a student loan was due. Now that I'm not tied down to any debt, I have the freedom to make decisions I couldn't before. I can make a purchase without worrying about overdrawing my bank account or falling behind on my bills.
Even though I'm pretty much back to where I started when I first arrived in Atlanta -- with just about a couple thousand dollars to my name -- I still feel like I hit the jackpot.
http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/08/pf/debt-payment/index.html
bottom line....if the average family can see what it needs to do to pay off debt and scale back on spending then why cant the government do the same.
this article proves that more spending does not pay off debt.
congress needs to read this article.
Yeah, extra-judicial torture and kill lists are *totally* constitutional, especially when they involve US citizens!
Warrentless wiretaps, data storage of emails, Patriot Act, Drones above the skies of America.
And the governmnet wonders why the public distrusts the institution.
We support the nomination of Mr. John Brennan, he will make a great Director
Heil Brennan, Heil Brennan....yeah, we know.
some members of washington wants to keep the people out of touch with reality so washington can move on with their plans without being caught screwing us. they want to do this by keeping the people stoned on dope.
what some claim to be the reason for the iraq war "OIL".......obama continues the afghan war for the "OPIUM".
Drone attacks target individuals, not military units....State Sanctioned Assasination.
How far up the food chain can this targeting become?
Can the President himself become a viable Drone Target?
Slippery Slope indeed.
Be careful, Omego. your post can be construed as threatening the President. People who have done that have been known to disappear.
the american tax-payer and government are strapped for cash. we cant afford anymore spending or donations to help anything anymore.
for us at home here in the U.S., i suggest the rich elite of the nation to step up and help out the american people.
Matt Damon has an organization to help the africans and does commercials for american food banks. others like sean penn has an organization to help haiti. the list goes on, big elite helping other countries.
i propose the rich elite like them to fund american food banks,soup kitchens and homeless shelters. they need to stop exporting their money to help foreign countries and then ask the american people to donate for the cause. as i stated before, the tax-payer is already strapped for cash.
if the nations rich elite stepped up as americans and help out their fellow americans, the nation would be better off and relieve the pressure on the average tax-payer and government.
Here in NJ, we are certainly not getting any help from Washington DC. Politics. Gov Christie made nice with Obama and now Speaker Bonehead won't give us any aid. 77 days and counting. Seven time as long as the wait for aid for Katrina. NJ and NY have never asked for any aid and when we do, we get nada.
Brennan looks like a serial murderer possessed by many powerful demons.
Perhaps that's what we need.
Nope, the democratic party is filled with them already.
So Brennan is like a weed which will be hard to get rid of? I hope he helps out on answering truthfully questions imposed of him in the Benghazi murders of 4 Americans on American soil.
.. . ISN'T THIS GREAT... another old face for the department of dirty tricks.......let's make sure everyone knows how it works....screw the people and reward the executives.....no no no new face to think differently - maybe peace no no no can't have PEACE we need war > Department of Dirty Tricks DO YOUR STUFF >> YOU CAN'T DIG IT UP - DO LIKE YOU DID FOR BUSH - MAKE IT UP........WE NEED WAR - LOOK SAME STORIES AS IRAQ USE THEM AGAIN THE PUBLIC IS STUPID THEY'LL NEVER CATCH ON.........
DEMOCRATS Perfect Pick - If We Can't Kill Them In The Womb - We'll Kill the little Bastards While They Are Sleeping With Their Teddy Bears. - John Brennan
All This brought to you by the Party Of - Oh Yes We Can - KILL YOUR CHILDREN With our Drones - Just Try and STOP US if You Can Repulican Retards !
It doesn't matter who President Barack Hussein Obama picks as long as they are not wrapped in black skin.....the senate will approve them! You know the only race of citizens that the forefathers wrote down in the Constitution as 3/5 of a human-beings are black citizens; not homosexuals!! So the senate will approve any citizen except a black citizen even if they are guilty of torture and stealing!! Please do not count Eric Holder............he got tainted under Clinton!! It is written "actions speak louder than words!!" President Barack Hussein Obama and Eric Holder are always the only black skinned citizen when they are in a group setting!! I guess they are both more conformable and feel safer they way!! Yes!! I know Barack cabinet is full of black women!! Just look at it this way "if president George Bush was always surrounded by black citizen you would see my point!!" Just my thoughts!!
The ONLY Black in the U.S. Senate is a Republican, and was appointed by a woman Republican governor of Eastern Indian decent.
The ONLY Black on the U.S. Supreme Court is a Conservative.
Republican President George W. Bush appointed a black woman as U.S. Secretary of State.
Black Republicans would never lower themselves to play the "race card". Democrats have yet to become color blind, that's why they use race to divide the country.
Just my thoughts.
ssmithlg Thank you for your thoughts!! Just my thoughts!!
How to catch a DEMOCRAT Telling A Lie............. Watch for every moment their lips move !
This coming from somebody that voted for Willard.
Grandpa..... Obama closed Gitmo yet? (2008 campaign promise)
Grandpa..... Obama cut the deficit in half yet? (2008 campaign promise)
Grandpa..... Obama resigned yet since he failed to get unemployment below 7%?
ssmithlg.......Obama got elected
ssmithlg.......Obama got elected again
ssmithlg.......live with it
Grandpa-Really?, "live with it"? Tell that to your grandchildren when they ask you "Grandpa, what happened? couldn't you have stopped it?" You will be so proud to tell them "live with it, and keep paying off my debt".