Meeting of minds has Obama's man set for CIA post

The Sydney Morning Herald

JOHN BRENNAN'S bunker is a soundproofed, windowless suite in the basement of the White House where, as one senator put it, Barack Obama's counter-terrorism chief ''decides each day who he's going to execute''.

Brennan - the ''priestly figure'' nominated by the US President as the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency - draws up the lists of suspected terrorists for assassination by drone in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. They are approved by Obama on what have become known as ''kill-list Tuesdays''.

Brennan helped the President to understand he could not turn away from the things that need to be done against the terrorists.

It's an unprecedented role for a US president, devised by an official who wields greater influence on White House security policy than more senior officials.

Brennan was at the forefront of moulding Obama the election candidate - who in 2008 denounced the CIA's hand in abductions and torture at secret foreign sites under the Bush administration - into Obama the President, who has overseen the rapid expansion of the CIA's legally questionable war by drone.
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Brennan's part is all the more striking because four years ago he was forced to withdraw from contention as CIA director over his role in justifying the agency's abuses under George Bush.

''It's fair to say that John Brennan has been instrumental in getting Obama to where his thinking is today on counter-terrorism,'' a former senior intelligence official, who declined to be named, said.

''Brennan helped the President to understand he could not turn away from the things that need to be done against the terrorists and then he helped construct the legal and moral framework so that they sat comfortably with the President's commitments.''

Brennan was born in 1955 to Irish immigrant parents and raised in New Jersey. He joined the CIA as an analyst in 1980, served as chief aide to the CIA director George Tenet during the Clinton administration and under Bush as first chief of the National Counterterrorism Centre. There he was entwined in aspects of the ''war on terror'' that returned to haunt him years later.

Brennan quit the CIA in 2005 to run a security consultancy until he was picked up by Obama's first presidential campaign as a consultant on national security and terrorism.

But when, as president-elect in 2008, Obama settled on Brennan as his CIA chief he faced a backlash over the former spy's earlier endorsement of some of the agency's abuses - including rendition, the abductions to secret torture and interrogation ''black sites'' in foreign countries.

Obama backed down out of concern about a fight in congressional confirmation hearings. But he still got his man, appointing Brennan assistant to the president for homeland security and counter-terrorism, a White House post not requiring Senate confirmation.

Brennan has portrayed his relationship with Obama as a meeting of minds. ''Ever since the first couple of months, I felt there was a real similarity of views that gave me a sense of comfort,'' he told The Washington Post in October. ''I don't think we've had a disagreement.''

The ground war in Afghanistan, the Guantanamo Bay prison and trials, and other legacies of the Bush era are not easily pinned on Obama. But he has taken ownership of the drone strategy. For the first time in US history, a president regularly approves the killing of named individuals, which has drawn criticism that he is acting as judge, jury and executioner.

''Obama has used drones four times as often as George Bush,'' the former senior intelligence official Mark Lowenthal said. ''In many respects, it fits the way in which Obama likes to approach a lot of his foreign policy problems - to be engaged but not to have too much at risk.''