John Brennan, Director of the CIA: Biography

John Owen Brennan, born in Jersey City on September 22, 1955, is a senior US government official who has been head of the CIA since March 2013. Previously, he served as the head of the National Anti-Terrorist Center, and from 2009 to 2013 he worked in the Barack Obama team 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 from the county of Roscommon. He studied at Ford University in New York and in 1977 received a bachelor's degree in political science. He spent an annual 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. Speaks fluently in Arabic, this skill enabled him to build a career in the special services.

The spouse of John Brennan is called Cathy Poklund Brennan, they have three children: a son and two daughters.

Initial stage of professional activity

Brennan had worked for the CIA for a long time, among other posts were analysts in the Middle East and South Asia, as well as an adviser in Saudi Arabia. Some information resources say 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 worked as the chief of staff of George Tenet, who at that time was the 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 Antiterrorist Center. In 2005, Brennan left the public service and temporarily moved to senior positions in private analytical organizations. On January 20, 2009, he became the successor to Kenneth Weinstein as an internal security adviser. The official title of his post sounded like "deputy adviser on internal security and fighting terrorism, as well as the presidential assistant."

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

New strategy

In June 2011, a new anti-terrorist strategy was presented. In his speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center on April 30, 2012, Brennan spoke out for the purposeful destruction of individual terrorists from Al Qaeda. It was not about delivering retaliatory blows, but about killing the 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 it is not possible to catch the criminal if local governments do not take action if we can not do something that will prevent an attack." And also only if The only available option will be to eliminate the person in question from the battlefield, and we intend to do so in such a way as to ensure that there is no collateral damage. "

His assertion that as a result of the attacks of "drones-killers" there can not be any casualties among civilians, was refuted by representatives of the Bureau of Journalistic Investigations.

September 16, 2011 at Harvard School, he delivered a speech on the balance between the interests of National Security and compliance with laws. The report said that the main priority remains to protect the American population. In the future, all actions, even the most secret, should not contradict the US social and legal norms. As a controversial point, he called the geographical definition of the conflict. British lawyer Daniel Bethlehem summarized the following: "The US believes that the war against Al-Qaeda has no geographical boundaries, even if there are any restrictions.The self-defense limit has already been passed, but the main allies see this problem differently: as a conflict geographically limited Defined "hot spots".

Director of the CIA

January 7, 2013, with the filing of President Barack Obama, John Brennan was in charge of the CIA. Two months later, on March 8 of the same year, US Vice President Joe Biden took his oath in Roosevelt's room in the White House.

In March 2014, Senator Dianne Fainstein accused the CIA of stealing documents from a computer designed to investigate the case of torture dealt with by the US Senate Intelligence Commission. John Brennan rejected accusations of computer hacking.

The Ukrainian conflict

In April 2014, Russian media, referring to high-ranking officials in the Ukrainian security service, reported that on 12 and 13 April John Brennan was in Kiev, where he met and talked with Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and his deputy Vitaly Yaryoma. The fact of holding consultations in Kiev with American intelligence services was later confirmed by Jay Carney, the White House press secretary. Russian media believe that there is a link between Brennan's visit and the soon-to-be-launched special operation of Ukrainian security forces using military helicopters and tanks against rebellious residents of eastern Ukraine, with a special focus on the city of Slavyansk. The CIA denies the existence of this relationship. On May 4, German media reported that the US intelligence services of the CIA and the FBI are directing the actions of the Ukrainian Transitional Government in the war against the rebels from the east of Ukraine.

Why John Brennan came to Moscow

This fact surprised many. In the spring of 2016, CIA director John Brennan traveled to Moscow to discuss with the Russian leadership the situation in Syria. Brennan confirmed that the US fully supports the political settlement of the Syrian conflict, but considers it necessary to resign Bashar Assad from his post as president. Later Dmitry Peskov specified that in the Kremlin there were no meetings with the CIA director.

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