Obama has chosen retired Admiral Dennis Blair as his National Intelligence Director, according to Reuters. It will be nice to have national intelligence.
NYT's profile on Blair:
Mr. Blair had intimate experience with intelligence during a 34-year Navy career. A brainy retired four-star admiral whose jobs included commander of the United States Pacific Command, he is also an Asia expert who is considered adept at running sprawling organizations, seemingly a prerequisite for heading an office that is still grappling with the task of fusing 16 spy agencies.Here is a PBS Q&A with Blair right after 9-11.
He was an occasional adviser to Mr. Obama in the Senate, but does not have a long relationship with him and was not a close adviser to the campaign. He does, however, have close ties to the Clinton family, and was a Rhodes scholar at Oxford with Bill Clinton.
He was the Central Intelligence Agency’s first associate director of military support, and served a tour on the National Security Council. He was also director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, and commanded the Kitty Hawk Battle Group and the destroyer Cochrane. In civilian life, Mr. Blair was president of the Institute for Defense Analyses, a nonprofit largely financed by the federal government to analyze national security issues for the Pentagon, from 2003 to 2006. read the rest
He's not liked by everyone.
Here's some more:
Politico: But the picture isn’t entirely rosy.
From 2003 to 2007, Blair was the president of the Institute for Defense Analysis. And his time at IDA could provide fodder for a contentious confirmation hearing.
Blair worked on a report that helped the Air Force decide to pursue a multiyear contract for F-22 Raptor fighter jets. At the same time, he was on the board of EDO Corp., a subcontractor to Lockheed Martin on the F-22 project.
After news reports about the apparent conflict of interest, Blair resigned as the head of IDA and his board seat at EDO.
Sources familiar with his background said they don’t see the incident as an impediment to his confirmation. But the Project on Government Oversight, which investigated the incident, said it’s concerned.
Blair is currently on the boards of Tyco International and Iridium Satellite.
He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1968 along with Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.), Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen and former Marine Corps Commandant Michael Hagee. And he was a Rhodes Scholar and a White House fellow.
