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

Why Blair is Gone

Update: Gibbs says that Obama has interviewed a number of different people and that a replacement is coming soon. Next week, Obama will also announce his national intelligence strategy going forward, according to Gibbs. Obama could announce a replacement then.

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Obama Replacing Dennis Blair

President Obama has decided to replace Admiral Dennis C. Blair, whose often tumultuous tenure as director of national intelligence was marked by frequent clashes with White House officials and other spy chiefs in America’s still fractured intelligence apparatus, government officials said Thursday.

The former admiral’s departure had been rumored for months. His relationship with the White House was rocky since the start of the Obama administration, and he also fought a rear guard action against efforts by the Central Intelligence Agency to cut down the size and power of the national intelligence director’s staff.

It is not immediately clear who will be Admiral Blair’s replacement. More at the NYT

Read Blair's resignation letter here. Obama's statement:

Dennis Blair has a remarkable record of service to the United States, and I am grateful for his leadership as Director of National Intelligence. Over the course of many decades, Admiral Blair has served with great integrity, intellect, and commitment to our country and the values that we hold dear. During his time as DNI, our intelligence community has performed admirably and effectively at a time of great challenges to our security, and I have valued his sense of purpose and patriotism. He and I both share a deep admiration for the men and women of our intelligence community, who are performing extraordinary and indispensable service to our nation.

Obama Speaks on Security Report Jan. 7

Read the report and the fixes here.

Transcript of Obama's remarks here.

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John Brennan and Janet Napolitano speak:

CIA Triple Agent Illustrates Intelligence Disarray

More than anything, the intelligence community appears to need a Martha Stewart type person to organize and coordinate. Seriously.
Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institute says that person should be Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair. You think?
Obama inherited an intelligence mess, Riedel says. Another thing Obama has to clean up. Riedel also says the person who killed the seven CIA agents wasn't a double agent, rather a triple agent. The triple agent bated the CIA saying he had information on a high level Al Qaeda official, which is why all the high level CIA agents were in one place. Did they really need seven CIA agents to receive the information?

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How Dennis Montgomery allegedly conned the CIA and the Bush Administration:

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Dennis Blair's Letter to CIA

As long as people are happy to kill themselves for an ideology, there's never going to be a way to be secure enough to stop terrorists from doing their thing. Even someone from your neighborhood could emerge from their home and blow up themselves at the local whatever. Those are the seeds that the terrorists are sowing. Eventually, they want the U.S. to face regular suicide bombings like they do in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. Somehow we have to find a way to fight ideology. But how? I don't think anyone has struck on a solution yet because I don't think anyone fully understands the problem yet. The problem doesn't appear to be rooted in poverty. The solution, for sure, can't be solely a military one, or a defensive one, or a body scanner.

Dennis Blair, National Intelligence Director:

The President was direct in his assessment that intelligence failures were a contributing factor in the escalation of this threat. This is a tough message for us to receive. But we have received it, and now we must move forward and respond as a team.

In coming days we will review what information was available to whom, determine what mistakes were made in assessing or sharing that information, commend those who did their jobs well, and hold accountable those who did not. I have no doubt in our ability to close the gaps that these attacks exposed.
Read all of it here

Dennis Blair Says Torture Worked

Once again, I'll say, just because torture works doesn't make it right. It also doesn't mean it's the best method to get information. The point is, it doesn't matter if torture works. HELLO. Ignorant arguments for torture are being presented.

If stealing makes me rich, does that mean I should steal? Come on people. 
The U.S. is not about torture. It is illegal and it is what barbarians do. It sounds like we really have lost our moral bearings.
Obama needs to give another speech specifically on torture.
In an old memo written by Dennis Blair, now Obama's director of national intelligence, Blair says torture works. 

CNN: The Bush-era interrogation techniques that many view as torture may have yielded important information about terrorists, President Obama's national intelligence director said in an internal memo.

"High-value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country," Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said in a memo to personnel.

The memo, obtained by CNN late Tuesday, was sent around the time the administration released several memos from the previous administration detailing the use of terror interrogation techniques such as waterboarding, which simulates drowning.

U.S. Missile Strike Kills 20 in Pakistan

AP: A suspected U.S. missile strike by a drone aircraft flattened a militant hide-out in northwestern Pakistan on Saturday, killing 20 local and foreign insurgents, intelligence officials said.
At least 15 more purported militants were wounded in the attack in South Waziristan, a militant stronghold near the Afghan border where al-Qaida leaders Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri are believed to be hiding.
The new U.S. administration has brushed off Pakistani criticism that the missile strikes fuel religious extremism and boost anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world's only nuclear-armed nation.
Pilotless U.S. aircraft are believed to have launched more than 30 attacks since July, and American officials say al-Qaida's leadership has been significantly weakened. Pakistani officials say the vast majority of the dead are civilians.

Meanwhile, Richard Holbrooke is meeting with Afghan leader Hamid Karzai:

Afghanistan has been heartened by recent strikes on extremist sanctuaries in the Pakistani tribal belt, which it says give vital support to the insurgency.
A new suspected US missile attack on Saturday killed at least 20 militants in a Pakistani tribal district near the Afghan border, a senior security official told AFP.
Holbrooke, President Barack Obama's regional troubleshooter, arrived in Afghanistan late Thursday from Pakistan where military commanders say they urgently need equipment to tackle the Taliban threat.

Obama could send more troops to Afghanistan soon:

Obama is expected to decide soon whether to send more US troops to Afghanistan with the US commander here, General David McKiernan, requesting up to 30,000 additional troops.
If they are approved for deployment, it would nearly double the size of the US force, which currently numbers around 37,000.

Obama Announces His Intelligence Team Video

The United States does not torture. We will abide by Geneva Conventions. Ladies and gentlemen, we have intelligence!

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Obama announces intelligence head, Leon Panetta and retired Adm. Dennis Blair as director of national intelligence. Other intelligence officials:

I will also rely on the talent and expertise of several distinguished public servants with substantial intelligence experience. The current DNI, Mike McConnell, will continue to offer his counsel through my foreign intelligence advisory board. The National Counterterrorism Center, the hub of our efforts to prevent attacks and root out terrorist networks will continue to benefit from the leadership of Michael Leiter.

And I am pleased to announce that John Brennan, a close adviser, CIA veteran, and former leader of the National Counterterrorism Center, will be my homeland security adviser and deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism serving with the rank of assistant to the president. John has the experience, vision, and integrity to advance America’s security.

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Transcript

CQ Politics: By tapping Leon Panetta to be CIA chief, Barack Obama sent a clear signal: no to torture. A year ago, Panetta wrote an article declaring, "We cannot and we must not use torture under any circumstances." And he included waterboarding--which the CIA has used---as torture. In fact, Obama's reported first choice for the CIA job, John Brennan, a career CIA official, had had his chances scuttled after bloggers and others griped that he had been soft, if not supportive, when it came to torture and CIA renditions.

Obama Announces Tim Kaine as New DNC Leader Video

Tomorrow, Obama will officially announce Leon Panetta to head the CIA, Dennis Blair, as director of National Intelligence, and John Brennan, as White House homeland security adviser and deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism.

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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, Bush, Blago, Warren and Levi

An action packed day and I've been away so let's get caught up.
Obama announces Ron Kirk for Federal Trade Representative and venture capitalist Karen Mills, administrator of the Small Business Administration. Obama announces his picks for labor, Hilda Solis, and transportation, Ron LaHood:

CNN: At a news conference in Chicago, Illinois, Obama nominated Rep. Hilda Solis for secretary of labor. She is a four-term Democratic congresswoman from Los Angeles, California.

He also nominated Republican Rep. Ray LaHood of Illinois as transportation secretary, venture capitalist Karen Mills to head the Small Business Administration and former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk to serve as U.S. trade representative.

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Will Bush pardon the shoe thrower? The shoe thrower, who has been beaten hopes so.
Blagojevich won't back down and his attorney is thuggish. I caught a few minutes of his press conference.
George Bush taps into the bank bailout money to rescue the automakers:

Politico: President Bush steps into the Roosevelt Room at 9:01 a.m. and announces a $17.4 billion bailout for GM and Chrysler, with the loans conditioned on the automakers showing a plan for 'viability' by March 31. A senior administration official told reporters during a telephone background briefing just before the president spoke that the firms need to show they can be 'profitable soon.' Ford got new financing before credit froze, and has said it does not need immediate government assistance to stay alive.

I kind of feel sorry for Bush because he seems to be a guy of limited talents forced into big shoes. He did the best he could, which wasn't good enough.

WSJ: The administrations of George W. Bush have virtually assured such a displacement by catastrophically throwing the country off balance, both politically and financially, while breaking the nation's sword in an inconclusive seven-year struggle against a ragtag enemy in two small bankrupt states. Their one great accomplishment -- no subsequent attacks on American soil thus far -- has been offset by the stunningly incompetent prosecution of the war. It could be no other way, with war aims that inexplicably danced up and down the scale, from "ending tyranny in the world," to reforging in a matter of months (with 130,000 troops) the political culture of the Arabs, to establishing a democracy in Iraq, to only reducing violence, to merely holding on in our cantonments until we withdraw.

Also, from Politico:

'Obama has yet to name his picks for senior intelligence positions; those announcements aren't expected until Obama returns from his holiday break. Several Democratic officials with knowledge of the deliberations said Friday that Dennis Blair, a retired admiral and the former head of U.S. Pacific Command, is likely - if not certain - to become director of national intelligence.'

Obama team is seriously scouring NASA's budget:

LA Times: Reporting from Washington -- Most nights it's possible to look skyward with a pair of cheap binoculars and see a $100,000 mistake circling the Earth. The glowing object -- an orbiting NASA tool bag -- was lost last month by an astronaut during a routine spacewalk.

The canvas-and-acrylic caddy contained two grease guns, a scraper, a trash bag and some wipes, hardly cutting-edge technology. So why did it cost $100,000?

NASA officials said they had no answer to that question -- beyond the fact that, as spokesman Allard Beutel put it, "space flight is expensive." That expense is drawing serious scrutiny from the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama.

Of 74 questions submitted to the agency by Obama's NASA transition team, more than half asked about basic spending issues, including cost overruns.

Two Obama administrations for the price of one?

WSJ: The Obama transition is putting a new twist on that idea. The president-elect is giving the country two administrations for the price of one.

The first, composed of Mr. Obama's initial wave of high-profile appointees, is full of familiar Washington veterans. This is the team that pleased moderates and even some Republicans, reassured financial markets -- and made the party's liberals complain about "retreads" and wonder what all that change rhetoric was about.

The second wave of appointments, most coming in the past week or so, is composed of lesser-known names, new faces and, all told, the kind of folks who look like the fabled "agents of change" promised in the campaign.

Obama's team lacks the ideological fervor:

But the most striking characteristic of the emerging cast of characters is this mix of old and new faces. What the two camps have in common is a general lack of obvious ideological fervor.

The gay community is really upset about Rick Warren giving his inaugural blessings. I think this guy is being elevated to more than his worth. I understand the outrage, though. An Obama advisor assures Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic that he's with gay people:

The deeper dynamic, though, is this: liberal groups are used to being treated like stepchildren in Washington. They are used to being under seige at all times, and it's going to take some adjustment to realize that gay rights are probably not in danger because of things like the Warren pick. (An Obama adviser, discussing this matter with me, urged patience, saying that Obama is committed to the substance of his campaign promises to expand gay rights.)
A little private reassurance would go a long way, and it seems that the Obama team ihas not accounted for the fact that everyone, on all sides, is going through a period of psychological adjustment from the Bush years.
This includes liberal interest groups accustomed to being slapped around by Bush and taken for granted by Bill Clinton.

Rick Warren praises Obama's "courage." Seems to me Warren could've offered a bit more humility to the gay community. Warren will be on Dateline tonight declaring that he's not homophobic. I think Warren is too big for his britches. That's the one of the problems with the choice of Warren. It validates his views. But he's not worth the fuss.

I commend President-elect Obama for his courage to willingly take enormous heat from his base by inviting someone like me, with whom he doesn't agree on every issue, to offer the Invocation at his historic Inaugural ceremony.

Hopefully individuals passionately expressing opinions from the left and the right will recognize that both of us have shown a commitment to model civility in America.

The Bible admonishes us to pray for our leaders. I am honored by this opportunity to pray God's blessing on the office of the President and its current and future inhabitant, asking the Lord to provide wisdom to America's leaders during this critical time in our nation's history.

Mike Madden of Salon asks: How the hell did Warren get inauguration tickets?
All the people at Salon are angry about Warren:

Even on vacation, I can't quite get over the choice of pastor Rick Warren to give Barack Obama's inaugural invocation. I'm all for Obama (and Republicans, for that matter) reaching out to the other side. I am not theoretically opposed to Obama choosing an antiabortion gay-rights critic; I'm opposed to Warren himself. He's a poster boy for kinder, gentler 21st century bigotry, and Obama shouldn't validate him with this lofty symbolic role.

Sarah Palin's daughter's Bristol's soon to be mother-in-law (Levi Johnston's mom) is busted on drug charges. The Palin clan never stops making news. 

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.

Mike McConnell Tells a Funny, Talks Intelligence

Mike McConnell, national intelligence director, tells a funny story about Colin Powell. Obama has yet to name his choice for national intelligence director, though ABC news says Admiral Dennis Blair is a contender.
This topic isn't my cup of tea but I found the speech interesting: