Obama Nominates Clapper for National Intelligence Director Video

Obama nominates James Clapper for Director of National Intelligence. Clapper would replace Dennis Blair.

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Obama Picks Clapper for National Intelligence Director

Check out James Clapper's bio here.

President Obama has picked Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr. to become the next director of national intelligence, choosing someone with decades of intelligence experience to take over the nation’s spy apparatus at a time of increasing threats at home.

Mr. Obama plans to announce his selection on Saturday, a senior official said. General Clapper would replace Adm. Dennis C. Blair, whom the president forced to resign last month.
....
General Clapper, who retired after 32 years in the Air Force in 1995, was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2007 as under secretary of defense for intelligence, overseeing the broad array of military intelligence assets. He was kept on when Mr. Obama assumed the presidency. He simultaneously serves as director of defense intelligence, reporting directly to the director of national intelligence, so he has direct familiarity with the office he would assume.
NYT

Obama Picks Leon Panetta to Head CIA

Update: Dianne Feinstein, who's about to take over as chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, isn't too happy that she wasn't consulted by Obama. 

Apparently, she wanted an insider.

Obama picks Leon Panetta to head the Central Intelligence Agency, and retired Adm. Dennis Blair as director of national intelligence. Panetta replaces Mike McConnell. During the primaries, Panetta compared Clinton Pollster Mark Penn to Karl Rove. Ouch. Opposition to Panetta and challenges. 

CNN: Leon Panetta, chief of staff in President Clinton's White House, will be President-elect Barack Obama's choice to be CIA director, two Democratic officials told CNN on Monday.

Leon Panetta was chief of staff for President Clinton.

The officials also said that retired Adm. Dennis Blair, who formerly headed the U.S. Navy's Pacific Command, will be tapped as director of national intelligence.

Panetta, 70, has had a long political career, beginning in 1966 when he was a legislative assistant to U.S. Sen. Thomas H. Kuchel, R-California.

Panetta was elected to the House of Representatives in 1977, serving California's 16th (now 17th) Congressional District until Clinton appointed him to head the Office of Budget and Management in 1993. He was chief of staff from 1994 to 1997.

Here is Panetta's bio from the The Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy:

Leon Edward Panetta has had a long and distinguished career in public service, ranging from his tour of duty in the U.S. Army to his service as the Chief of Staff to the President of the United States.
Born in Monterey in 1938 of Italian immigrant parents, Panetta attended both Catholic and public schools and worked on his family’s farm in Carmel Valley, where he lives today with his wife Sylvia. He earned a B.A. magna cum laude from Santa Clara University and his J.D. from Santa Clara University Law School, where he was an editor of the Law Review. He served as a First Lieutenant in the Army from 1964 to 1966 and received the Army Commendation Medal.
Panetta first went to Washington in 1966, when he served as a legislative assistant to U.S. Senator Thomas H. Kuchel of California, the Senate Minority Whip. In 1969, he became Special Assistant to the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare and then Director of the U.S. Office for Civil Rights, where he was responsible for enforcement of equal education laws. His book Bring Us Together (published in 1971) is an account of that experience. In 1970, he went to New York City, where he served as executive assistant to Mayor John Lindsay, overseeing the city’s relations with the state and federal governments. Then, in 1971, he returned to California, where he practiced law in the Monterey firm of Panetta, Thompson & Panetta until he was elected to Congress in 1976.
Panetta was a U.S. Representative from California’s 16th (now 17th) district from 1977 to 1993. As a House member, he was a key participant in the 1990 budget summit as well as every other budget summit during the 1980s. He authored the Hunger Prevention Act of 1988; the Fair Employment Practices Resolution extending civil rights protections to House employees for the first time; numerous successful measures to protect the California coast, including creation of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary; legislation that established Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement for hospice care for the terminally ill; and other legislation on a variety of education, health, agriculture and defense issues.
From 1989 to 1993, Panetta was chairman of the House Committee on the Budget. He also served as a member of that committee from 1979 to 1985. He chaired the House Agriculture Committee’s Subcommittee on Domestic Marketing, Consumer Relations and Nutrition; the House Administration Committee’s Subcommittee on Personnel and Police; and the Select Committee on Hunger’s Task Force on Domestic Hunger. He also served as vice chairman of the Caucus of Vietnam Era Veterans in Congress and as a member of the President’s Commission on Foreign Language and International Studies.
Panetta left Congress in 1993, at the beginning of his ninth term, to become Director of the Office of Management and Budget for the incoming Clinton administration. In that position, he was instrumental in developing the 1993 budget package that is widely credited with achieving a balanced federal budget and eventual budget surpluses.
Panetta was appointed Chief of Staff to President Clinton on July 17, 1994, and served in that position until January 20, 1997. He was the principal negotiator of the successful 1996 budget compromise, and was widely praised for bringing order and focus to White House operations and policy making.
Panetta is currently co-directs with his wife Sylvia the Leon & Sylvia Panetta Institute for Public Policy, based at California State University, Monterey Bay – a university he helped establish on the site of the former U.S. Army base, Fort Ord. The Institute serves as a nonpartisan, not-for-profit study center for the advancement public policy, seeking in particular to attract thoughtful men and women to lives of public service.
In addition, Mr. Panetta serves as Distinguished Scholar to the Chancellor of the California State University system. He advises the Chancellor on national issues affecting higher education and teaches a Master’s course in Public Policy at the Panetta Institute.
In 1997, he was also appointed Presidential Professor at Santa Clara University, teaching a course called Studies in Public Policy
Mr. Panetta has served as a leader in numerous community and national public policy organizations throughout his career. In March 2006, he was chosen to serve on the Iraq Study Group, a bi-partisan committee established at the urging of Congress and organized by the U.S. Institute of Peace, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Center for the Study of the Presidency and the James A. Baker III Institute. Since 2005, he has served as member of the Independent Task Force on Immigration and America’s Future. In November 2004, Governor Schwarzenegger appointed him co-chair of the Council on Base Support and Retention.
Mr. Panetta served a six-year term on the Board of Directors of the New York Stock Exchange beginning in 1997. He was chairman of the Committee for Review for the New York Stock Exchange Board of Directors and was co-chair of the Corporate Governance and Listing Standards Committee for the Stock Exchange.
He served on the National Review Board of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the board of the National Steinbeck Center, and the University of California Santa Cruz Foundation, and since June 1998, he has served on the board of the Santa Clara University Law School Board of Visitors. He also serves as a member of the Board of Trustees for Santa Clara University; as a member of the Fleishman-Hillard International Advisory Board; as a trustee for the Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula; and as a director for the Monterey Bay Aquarium. He is chairman of the National Board of Advisors of the Center for National Policy as well as chairman of the Pew Oceans Commission. He is also a member of the Board of Directors for Blue Shield of California; IDT; Zenith; Connetics; the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation; Bread for the World; and Close Up. He lectures nationally and internationally on the state of the economy, the federal budget and other issues facing our nation, and is the recipient of awards and honors too numerous to list.

Mr. Panetta is married to the former Sylvia Marie Varni, who administered his district offices during his service in Congress and continues as a partner in his many activities. They have three grown sons and five grandchildren.

Obama Picks Dennis Blair For Intelligence

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.

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

Here is a PBS Q&A with Blair right after 9-11.
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.