What you should know about John Brennan, the new CIA head

US President Barack Obama’s nominee to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, John Brennan, is no stranger to controversy. This is the second time Brennan, a 25-year veteran of the CIA, has been nominated for the spy agency’s top job. He withdrew in 2008 after questions were raised about his connection to enhanced interrogation techniques during the George W. Bush administration. However, Obama picked Brennan as his top counter-terrorism adviser, and Brennan was deeply involved in the planning of the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. He has also been very influential in crafting the US government’s strategy to combat of terror organizations in Yemen and elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa. [caption id=“attachment_580741” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  President Barack Obama (left) and John Brennan. AP[/caption] In light of Brennan’s nomination, Foreign Policy magazine has sifted through seven of the best recent books on US foreign policy to put together a portrait of Brennan. Among the patterns that emerged are the following: 1) Brennan was the top advisor to then CIA chief George Tenet when Guantanmo Bay was created and “enhanced interrogation” techniques were put into practice. The magazine quotes from James Mann’s, The Obamians: The Struggle Inside the White House to Redefine American Power, to illustrate Brennan’s views: “In public interviews after leaving the CIA, Brennan had supported the need for change in some of the agency’s practices, such as waterboarding, but he had also defended the practice of rendition and other parts of the post-2001 program. “We do have to take the gloves off in some areas,” he had explained.” 2)Brennan was known as “the Answer Man”, according to Bob Woodward in his book, the Obama’s Wars, because “he worked so hard, read raw intercepts, and talked directly to foreign intelligence services and chiefs.” 3) Brennan is often outspoken in his views and his not afraid to challenge other members of Obama’s brain trust. Woodward reports in his book that Brennan butted heads with then Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair over the failed “underwear bombing” on Christmas Day, 2009. That clash event cost Blair his job, according to James Mann, with Obama letting him go in May 2010. In summing up Brennan, Foreign Policy said his views mesh closely with those of president Obama and the two are “likely to see eye to eye” when it comes to tackling terrorism. Read the full Foreign Policy story here.