john brennan

Above all, Brennan emphasized that the U.S. was not locked in a struggle with the world’s billion Muslims.

I’ll have a broader piece up soon about John Brennan’s speech about counterterrorism, which in many ways represented a stark departure from several key tenets of the Bush administration’s approach. But on one issue that I asked Brennan about, the president’s chief adviser for counterterrorism and homeland security seemed reluctant to clear up an issue [...]

Live from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, here’s John Brennan, President Obama’s assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism, articulating the administration’s counterterrorism strategy. I’ll be liveblogging the speech and, unless the Fail Whale foils me, tweeting it as well.
… and we’re off. First part of the speech: counterterrorism reform. Obama’s refocused on “a [...]

The Washington Post previews a speech that top Obama counterterrorism aide John Brennan will give later this morning at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. (I’ll be there to cover it.) It looks like it’ll unite some recent speeches and statements on the administration’s approach to the terrorism challenge — like Homeland Security Secretary [...]

The Wall Street Journal reports that White House Counsel Greg Craig’s job is in trouble. Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina tells the paper’s Evan Perez that speculation to that regard amounts to “typical Washington parlor games.” Then he says that it’s unfortunate that “others spend their time pointing fingers in an attempt to promote [...]

Here I was, reading through the transcript of yesterday’s White House briefing on swine flu, thinking “Why is John Brennan, the senior White House adviser for homeland security and counterterrorism, part of this briefing?” when I saw Brennan provide a certain measure of reassurance:
Q But from a security perspective, nothing to rule [...]

In the interest of obsessive Kremlinology, something else worth noting from the Washington Post’s timeline of Obama’s decision to declassify last week’s torture memos. Notice that two of the officials arguing against disclosure are White House senior counterrorism adviser John Brennan, a CIA veteran, and CIA Deputy Director Steve Kappes. Those guys are pretty well [...]

Adam Serwer at TAPPED, reading reports of how White House aide John Brennan is pushing to stop declassifications of torturous CIA interrogations, observes:
Brennan may have withdrawn his name from consideration as head of the CIA, but he’s clearly winning the battle over who has more influence with the president. Civil libertarians didn’t beat Brennan. He [...]

Remember how I wondered on Friday if soon-to-be-White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan and CIA Deputy Director Steve Kappes would be the the real power brokers in President-elect Barack Obama’s intelligence community, despite the announced appointments of Adm. Dennis Blair (Ret.) as director of national intelligence and Leon Panetta as CIA director?
Mark Hosenball of Newsweek, [...]

Everyone in the blogosphere — Glenn, I’m looking in your direction — who may have thought that John Brennan was kneecapped just because he didn’t become CIA director should check out what President-elect Barack Obama had to say about Brennan during the Blair/Panetta rollout:
I’m pleased to announce that John Brennan – a close advisor, CIA [...]