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SUNDAY, JUNE 6, 2010 A forceful voice on Obama’s security team
Counterterror director Brennan has emerged as key adviser
by Anne E. Kornblut
When President Obama want- ed an investigation into the intel- ligence failures that led to the at- tempted airline attack on Christ- mas Day, he turned to the man who has emerged as one of his most trusted advisers: John O. Brennan. Within two weeks, Brennan had produced a sharply written report that caught other intelli- gence heads by surprise — and caused an uproar in some quar- ters for its harsh assessment of in- telligence agencies’ performance. Moreover, Brennan showed the fi- nal draft to his colleagues just hours before it was to be made public, a move that his critics said was an example of his tendency to exert tight control. Eventually, one of the casu-
alties of the report would be Adm. Dennis C. Blair, who was forced out as director of national intelli- gence last month. But the report and its aftermath also demon- strated the skillful maneuvering of Brennan, who after being forced to withdraw from consid- eration for CIA director in 2008 has transformed his role into that of the president’s closest intelli- gence adviser. His dominance complicated ef-
forts to find a new director of in- telligence: Who would want the job if Brennan is already doing it? The answer, Obama said Satur-
day, is retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr., whose nomi- nation he announced in a Rose Garden appearance. Obama said Clapper “possesses a quality that I value in all my advisers: a willing- ness to tell leaders what we need to know even if it’s not what we want to hear.” If confirmed, Clapper faces a series of substantial tests. He will have to strengthen an agency whose mission and authority have been called into question; win the confidence of lawmakers skeptical of another intelligence chief with a military background; and, perhaps most important, de- velop a strong relationship with one of Obama’s top lieutenants, Brennan. For all the near-misses on his
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watch, including the failed bomb- ing of Times Square, Brennan has grown only more powerful within the White House, according to numerous officials. His allies — and there are many — say he is abundantly competent with a re- assuring style. Critics — many of them close to Blair — say Bren- nan’s 25-year career at the CIA has made him too sympathetic to the agency, skewing the new bal- ance that was supposed to emerge with the intelligence reforms that followed the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Nearly all agree, though, that Brennan has built a high-voltage security hub in the White House, one that far outmuscles that of his predecessors. From a windowless, lower-level West Wing suite that he shares with Denis R. McDo-
JIM WATSON/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE VIA GETTY IMAGES
Critics and allies agree that counterterrorism director John Brennan has built a high-voltage security hub in the White House as a close adviser to the president, one that far outmuscles that of his predecessors.
nough, the chief of staff to the Na- tional Security Council, Brennan has frequent access to the presi- dent.
“Brennan is really doing the job of the DNI,” one senior intelli- gence official said.
‘Invaluable go-to person’
Brennan, 55, spent most of his career at the CIA. He speaks Ara- bic and once served as CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia. But he is as comfortable among politicians and agency heads as he is in the intelligence world. For several years, he was principal briefer to President Bill Clinton. He also served as a senior aide to then-CIA Director George J. Ten- et, putting him at the highest rungs of the agency. After the Sept. 11 attacks, he was tapped to create a new coun- terterrorism center outside the CIA, a precursor to the National Counterterrorism Center, or NCTC. He earned Obama’s trust dur- ing the 2008 presidential cam- paign as an adviser on security policy and terrorism. But after be- ing considered to lead the CIA during the transition, he was forced to withdraw after liberals objected that he had acquiesced to the CIA’s harsh interrogation policies during the Bush adminis- tration.
Brennan, stung by the accusa- tions and insistent they were un- true, resolved to serve the Obama administration, anyway. His per- formance in an unconfirmed role over the past year and a half im- pressed Obama further still, mak- ing Brennan an “invaluable go-to person,” in the words of one sen- ior official who has not always agreed with him. Administration officials reject
suggestions that Brennan has be- come a de facto DNI, nothing that he does not perform the job’s core function, managing the broader intelligence community. But they acknowledge that Brennan, along with McDonough and others,
have kept a tight rein on the ad- ministration’s message, barring Blair, CIA Director Leon Panetta and other top officials from meet- ing with reporters or appearing on television news shows, even when their agencies are in the headlines. White House officials said they simply do not believe that intelli- gence chiefs should be put in the position of having to answer pol- icy questions in public. Several national security offi-
cials praised Brennan for running a tight intelligence ship without strangling the agencies. David Kris, assistant attorney general for national security, said the Jus- tice Department does “not feel controlled or micromanaged.” He acknowledged only one excep- tion: When the White House as- sumed jurisdiction in the deci- sion over where to try the self- declared plotter of the Sept. 11 at- tacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed. “I think the White House gen-
erally and Brennan in particular have been very respectful of the law enforcement prerogatives the A.G. enjoys,” Kris said.
Piercing internal review After a young Nigerian named
Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab al- legedly tried to down an airliner before landing in Detroit, Bren- nan ran the moment-by-moment coordination for a White House that had never before faced such a security crisis. With much of the administration away on vacation, he filled the vacuum, officials said. And when the director of the National Counterterrorism Cen- ter, Michael Leiter, later came un- der fire for going on a ski trip in- stead of staying in Washington, Brennan took the blame, saying he had told him to do so. Obama soon directed Brennan to conduct an internal review of the intelligence breakdowns lead- ing up to the unsuccessful attack. When the report was released to the public Jan. 7, officials said, heads of various agencies — espe-
cially the office of the DNI, the NCTC, CIA and State — were furi- ous that they were being blamed for failing to connect pieces of in- telligence about Abdulmutallab, officials said. One U.S. intelli- gence official said that Obama’s announcement of the findings had to be delayed two times that afternoon as Blair and other top intelligence officials raised ob- jections and pointed to what they said were mistakes in the report. Executives “got it at 11 a.m.,”
the official said. “It was all a sur- prise. Not only was it a stinging rebuke, but it had factual errors in it.”
At least one senior intelligence
official lauded Brennan for pro- ducing a review that was “ex- traordinarily candid,” even if it did leave Cabinet members feel- ing “very defensive, very chal- lenged about the way that they did their jobs.” “Everybody wanted to make sure their ox wasn’t gored, and to some extent, everybody’s ox was gored,” the official said. “That’s a balance. You want to have a real report? Or you want everybody to be happy?”
Senior White House advisers acknowledged that they fielded vociferous complaints, especially from Leiter and Blair. But they defended the decision to exclude the intelligence officials from the internal probe and said it had lit- tle bearing on Blair’s role as DNI, which by then was already in jeopardy. Obama had requested a review that was “done independ- ently and objectively,” one official said. “The president didn’t say, ‘Dear
executive branch, dear [counter- terrorism] community, do a re- view, an assessment of your work,’ ” one senior White House official said. In any case, officials note, the
report was largely validated last month by a similarly harsh re- view by the Senate Select Com- mittee on Intelligence.
kornbluta@washpost.com
Staff writer Greg Miller contributed to this report.
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