Why CIA Director John Brennan Must Resign (and should never have been appointed)
March 13, 2014
A Former CIA Analyst's Perspective
Why CIA Director John Brennan Must Resign
by MELVIN A. GOODMAN
CIA director John Brennan has become an embarrassment to President Barack Obama and should resign immediately. Brennan has clearly worn out his welcome with the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), and recent history tells us that when a CIA director is found in the crosshairs of the committee it is time to go. In the 1980s, CIA director William Casey was found to be lying to the committee on Iran-Contra, and even such Republican members of the committee as Senator Barry Goldwater wanted his resignation. In the 1990s, CIA director Jim Woolsey angered SSCI chairman Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ) and other key members of the committee, and the Clinton administration persuaded Woolsey to resign. Brennan’s resignation would allow the Obama administration to release a sanitized version of the SSCI’s report on CIA detention and rendition policy and thus avoid a prolonged battle with the Congress over this issue.
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Brennan never should have been appointed CIA director in the first place. During his campaign for the presidency in 2007-2008, Barack Obama spoke out against the militarization and politicization of the intelligence community, and indicated that an Obama administration would demand more transparency in the community and an end to intelligence abuses. Even before his election, however, Obama appointed an intelligence advisory staff that was headed by former associates of George Tenet, whose failed stewardship of the CIA included phony intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq War and the cover-up of intelligence failures for 9/11. Tenet’s deputy, John McLaughlin, who supported CIA programs of renditions and detentions, was part of the advisory group.
Immediately after the election, Obama appointed one of Tenet’s proteges, John Brennan, to head the transition team at CIA. Brennan, as Tenet’s chief of staff, was part of the corruption and cover-up at CIA. He was slated to become Obama’s director at CIA, but Brennan removed his name from consideration when it became clear that he would have serious difficulty in the confirmation process because of his support for CIA detentions and renditions. Like Robert Gates, who had to withdraw his nomination in 1987 because of his dissembling over Iran-Contra, but then laundered his credentials to become confirmed four years later, Brennan too laundered his credentials for a successful bid to become CIA director in 2013.
It should not be forgotten that, during the Tenet era at CIA, Brennan was the chief of staff and deputy executive director under George Tenet, and provided no opposition to decisions to conduct torture and abuse of suspected terrorists and to render suspected individuals to foreign intelligence services that conducted their own torture and abuse. Brennan had risen through the analytic ranks at the CIA, and should have been aware that analytic standards were being ignored at the Agency. Brennan was also an active defender of the program of warrantless eavesdropping, implemented at the National Security Agency under the leadership of one of Tenet’s successors, General Michael Hayden, then director of NSA.
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http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/13/why-cia-director-john-brennan-must-resign/
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