Brennan, Harding Slated For Top Intelligence Jobs

By GottaLaff

Via Ambinder:

Democratic and national security sources say that former National Counterrorism Center head John Brennan [a lifelong Republican who converted to Obama last year] remains the favorite to be nominated director of the Central Intelligence Agency even as his pending appointment raises the hackles of some Obama advisers because of his ties to George Tenet and controversial programs.

The sources say that Brennan has begun to recruit a team he hopes to bring with him to the agency, and that he has been vetted. [...]

Also being vetted for a key intelligence job is Maj. Gen. Robert Harding (Ret)., formerly director of operations at the Defense Intelligence Agency and a former head of the army's intelligence operations. [see below] [...]

A career CIA officer, Brennan favors a holistic and systematic approach to intelligence gathering, and earned the respect of Democrats as the founding director of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, now the National Counterrorism Center. On terrorism, as he told National Journal's Shane Harris, United States foreign policy should be more proactive.

I am a strong proponent of trying to focus more of our efforts on the upstream phenomenon of terrorism. I make the analogy to pollution. We learned that pollutants kill us when they get into the water we drink or the fish we eat or the air we breathe. But I think we also learned that we have to go upstream to identify and eliminate those sources of pollution. Terrorism is a tactic, and we have to be more focused upstream. Since 9/11, understandably we've focused downstream, on those terrorists who might be in our midst or trying to kill us, the operators. I think there needs to be much more attention paid to those upstream factors and conditions that spawn terrorists.

That last part sounds pretty good.

In interviews since leaving the government, Brennan has expressed support for the government's rendition policy, calling it effective, "enhanced" interrogation techniques and immunity for telecommunications companies involved in government spying efforts.

That part sounds horrendous.

Obama takes an opposite position on all three subjects.

I'm back to that part sounding pretty good.

His widely reported choice of former deputy attorney Eric Holder as attorney general may help mollify critics of the Brennan pick, as Holder and White House counsel Gregory Craig, along with Obama's national security adviser and director of national intelligence, will set policy, not Brennan.

Let's hope so. Here is more on Harding:

Major General Robert Harding, USA (Ret.), Chief Executive Officer: General Harding’s 33 years of military service included assignments as the deputy to the Army's Chief of Intelligence, as the director for operations in the Defense Intelligence Agency-where he was responsible for the Department of Defense Attaché System and the Defense Human Intelligence Service (DHS)-and as the commander of the Army's only organization focused on homeland security. He most recently served as the executive vice president for operations at a medium-sized logistics and supply-chain security company. He has extensive experience running global operations as well as providing security for sensitive national programs, facilities and technologies.

There you go. Any thoughts?