President Obama to nominate counterterrorism advisor John Brennan to head CIA, Chuck Hagel to Defense
President Barack Obama will nominate John Brennan, his chief counterterrorism adviser, to be the next director of the CIA, a senior administration official said Monday.
President Barack Obama meets with John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security, in the Oval Office, Jan. 4, 2010. Official White House photo by Pete Souza
Brennan, 57, has served as assistant to the president for counterterrorism and homeland security since 2009.
Obama’s announcement of Brennan’s nomination to the CIA post will occur, along with the nomination of former Sen. Chuck Hagel to be the next secretary of defense, another senior administration official said.
Brennan has shaped the White House’s strategy to aggressively pursue suspected terrorists — dramatically escalating the use of armed unmanned aircraft, often referred to as drones — and to kill them in the ungoverned territories of Pakistan and in Yemen.
He was also intimately involved in the run-up to the raid on the Osama bin Laden compound in May 2011.
For Hagel, getting to the Pentagon will mean overcoming already vocal opposition from pro-Israel groups and others who object to his stance on Iran and Hamas. He has also faced opposition from gay rights groups, who were strong supporters of Obama’s election campaigns, for a comment Hagel made in 1998 in which Hagel questioned whether a nominee for ambassadorship was suitable because he was “openly, aggressively gay.” He apologized for that remark in December.
