Since joining Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign, the CIA director and former White House counter-terrorism and homeland security coordinator, John Brennan, has been Obama’s liaison to the secret world of US intelligence. It has rewarded Brennan tremendously: not only does he now run the agency he served for decades, his position appears secure even after he obstructed a Senate inquiry into Bush-era torture. Perhaps his most ironic aspect of that obstruction was an attempt to get the Justice Department to investigate Senate staffers for allegedly removing classified information.
Yet while Brennan was still a White House official, on 7 May 2012, he talked about having “inside control” of a plot by al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) to place a bomb on a US-bound plane. Brennan’s confirmation occurred on an official conference call with ex-counter-terrorism officials who now recycle intelligence-community talking points for TV news outlets.
“We were confident that we had inside control over the – any plot that might have been associated with this device,” Brennan is quoted in a transcript later obtained by Judicial Watch, in which he attempts to assure the media personalities that the danger from the bomb was marginal. Subsequent media reports promptly stated that the US and its allies had infiltrated the terror group.
Months later, when Brennan testified before the Senate intelligence panel for his CIA confirmation hearing, the long-time intelligence official denied he had in fact confirmed the AQAP infiltration. Yet he confirmed that he had said the US had “inside control” of the plot and lamented that the operation “got out to the press before that operation was, in fact, concluded”.
In March 2013, the Senate confirmed Brennan as CIA director by a 63-34 vote.
