John Brennan, CIA director: biography

2024 Author: Henry Conors | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-02-12 02:46

John Owen Brennan, born in Jersey City on September 22, 1955, is a senior American government official who has been head of the CIA since March 2013. Previously, he served as chief of the National Counterterrorism Center, and from 2009 to 2013 he worked in the team of Barack Obama as an adviser on the fight against terrorism.

Years of youth

John Brennan, whose biography began in the town of North Bergen, New Jersey, grew up in a family of Irish immigrants who arrived from County Roscommon. He attended Fordham University in New York and received a bachelor's degree in political science in 1977. He completed a one-year internship abroad at the American University in the Egyptian capital of Cairo, and defended his master's degree in public administration with a focus on the Middle East region in 1980 at the University of Texas at Austin. Fluent in Arabic, it was this skill that allowed him to build a career in the special services.

John Brennan's wife's name is Cathy Pokluda Brennan, they have three children: a son and two daughters.

The initial stage of professionalactivities

Brennan worked for the CIA for a long time, including positions as an analyst for the Middle East region and South Asia, as well as an adviser in Saudi Arabia. Some information resources report that at that time he converted to Islam and made a pilgrimage to Mecca, accompanied by representatives of the Saudi ruling dynasty. In 1999, he served as chief of staff for George Tenet, who at the time was director of the CIA. In 2001, John Brennan was appointed Deputy Director of the CIA. From 2004 to 2005, he was the head of the National Anti-Terrorist Center. In 2005, Brennan left the public service and temporarily moved to senior positions in private think tanks. On January 20, 2009, he succeeded Kenneth Weinstein as Homeland Security Adviser. His official job title was "Deputy Adviser for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism and Assistant to the President".

Due to the fact that the famous journalist Glenn Greenwald opposed the appointment of John Brennan to senior positions in the intelligence agencies, the latter had to resign. Brennan was accused of supporting the harsh interrogation practices used in the Abu Ghraib prison under the George W. Bush administration. In early 2013, Barack Obama invited him to return to the same post.

New strategy

In June 2011, a newanti-terrorist strategy. In a speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center on April 30, 2012, Brennan advocated the targeted elimination of individual al-Qaeda terrorists. It was not about delivering retaliatory strikes, but about killing participants in the planned terrorist attacks. At the end of the speech he said:

"We will decide to take such measures only if there is no other choice, if there is no way to catch the criminal, if the local governments do not take action, if we cannot do something that will prevent the attack. And also only in the event that the only option available is to remove the person in question from the battlefield, and we intend to do so in a way that ensures that there is no collateral damage."

His assertion that there could be no civilian casu alties as a result of "killer drone" attacks was refuted by representatives of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

September 16, 2011, at Harvard School, he gave a speech about balancing the interests of Homeland Security and law enforcement. The report stated that protecting the American population remains a top priority. In the future, all actions, even the most secret ones, should not contradict social and legal norms accepted in the United States. As a point of contention, he cited the geographic definition of the conflict. British lawyer Daniel Bethlehem summed it up as follows: "The US believes that the war against Al-Qaeda has no geographical boundaries, even if there are any restrictions. The limit of self-defense has already been passed. However,the main allies see this problem differently: as a conflict geographically limited to certain "hot spots".

CIA Director

January 7, 2013, at the suggestion of President Barack Obama, John Brennan was appointed director of the CIA. Two months later, on March 8 of the same year, US Vice President Joe Biden took the oath from him in the Roosevelt room in the White House.

In March 2014, Senator Dianne Feinstein accused the CIA of stealing documents from a computer used to investigate a torture case being handled by the US Senate Intelligence Committee. John Brennan denied allegations of computer hacking.

Ukrainian conflict

In April 2014, Russian media, citing high-ranking officials in the Ukrainian security service, reported that on April 12 and 13, John Brennan was in Kyiv, where he met and talked with Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and his deputy Vitaly Yarema. The fact that consultations were held in Kyiv with US intelligence agencies was later confirmed by Jay Carney, the White House press secretary. Russian media believe that there is a connection between Brennan's visit and a special operation by Ukrainian security forces that began shortly thereafter using military helicopters and tanks against rebellious residents of the eastern part of Ukraine, with a special focus on the city of Slovyansk. The CIA denies the existence of this relationship. On May 4, German media reported that the American intelligence services, the CIA and the FBI, were controlling the actions of the Ukrainian transitionalgovernments in a war against rebels from eastern Ukraine.

Why did John Brennan come to Moscow

This fact surprised many. In the spring of 2016, CIA Director John Brennan traveled to Moscow to discuss the situation in Syria with the Russian leadership. Brennan confirmed that the United States fully supports the political settlement of the Syrian conflict, but considers it necessary to resign Bashar al-Assad from the presidency. Later, Dmitry Peskov clarified that the CIA director had not had any meetings in the Kremlin.

John Brennan was in the Russian capital in early March. In the middle of the same month, Vladimir Putin ordered the withdrawal of the bulk of the Russian military from Syria, as the tasks assigned to them were completed.