The Washington Times is reporting tonight that one of the contract employees involved in the State Department passport scandal works for a company whose CEO is linked to Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential campaign — as an advisor “on intelligence and foreign policy.”
The Times, owned by the Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, reports:
The … employee is the only individual to have accessed both Mr. Obama's and Mr. McCain's passport information without proper authorization, a State Department spokesman said. That employee, who was not named, triggered an electronic alarm system, officials familiar with the probe said.
The company in question is The Analysis Corp., headed by John O. Brennan.
But what the Washington Times fails to mention in their hit piece disguised as serious journalism is that Brennan also has long ties to the Bush administration, as well as former CIA Director George Tenet – originally a Bill Clinton appointee.
Not that any of these connections prove anything on their face, but it’s important to provide the context that the Times fails to include in its spin on the news.
Prior to taking the top post at the intelligence-agency connected Analysis Corp. in late 2005, Brennan headed the National Counterterrorism Center — appointed to the post with the approval of President Bush.
Prior to that, Brennan had a long career with the CIA, even serving as chief of staff to the director of the Central Intelligence Agency – then George Tenet — and later as deputy executive director of the CIA.
And if Brennan has a loyalty, it is to his former boss and Clinton appointee George Tenet, who served as head of the CIA from 1997 to mid-2004 — under both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
A Salon article confirms Brennan’s devotion to the former CIA director in a story it ran after Tenet’s “tell-all” book, “At the Center of the Storm,” hit the shelves in the spring of 2007:
Tenet's ties with contractors were underscored last week in a dispute between two groups of former CIA officials over Tenet's legacy. On April 28, six former intelligence officers wrote to Tenet, saying he shared culpability with President Bush and Vice President Cheney for "the debacle in Iraq," and suggesting he donate half the royalties from his book to Iraq war veterans and their families. All of the signatories had severed their ties to U.S. intelligence, although three of them, Phil Giraldi, Larry Johnson and Vince Cannistraro, work as consultants for news organizations, corporations and government agencies outside of intelligence.
A few days later, six recently retired officers responded. They called the first letter a "bitter, inaccurate and misleading attack" on Tenet and pointed out that it was drafted by officers who "had not served in the Agency for years." Tenet, his supporters said, "literally led the nation's counterterrorism fight." And three of its six signatories were directly involved in that fight -- as contractors. They included John Brennan of the Analysis Corp.; Cofer Black, Tenet's former counterterrorism director and vice chairman of Blackwater, the private military contractor; and Robert Richer, the former deputy director of the CIA's clandestine services. Richer recently left Blackwater to become the CEO of Total Intelligence, a new company formed with Black and other ex-CIA officials to provide intelligence services to corporations and government agencies. [Emphasis added.]
(Brennan also appeared on the Charlie Rose show defending his former boss, Tenet, against criticism after his book was published. See link here.)
And even while an Obama “advisor,” Brennan has spoken out publicly in direct opposition to positions and votes taken by Sen. Obama, as evidenced in an article published by the nonpartisan think tank Think Progress:
Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has consistently spoken out and voted against granting retroactive immunity for telecoms that participated with the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. This stance was part of the reason he won the support of Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), a leader on civil liberties issues.
One of Obama’s advisers on intelligence and foreign policy advisers, however, is someone who “strongly” supports telecomm immunity. John Brennan is a former CIA official and the current chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance. In a new National Journal interview, Brennan makes it clear that he agrees with the Bush administration on the issue of immunity….
So the implication advanced in the out-of-context Washington Times report that Brennan is somehow an Obama loyalist is betrayed by Brennan’s decades-long resume showing that his true loyalties are to the CIA and his former Company boss (a Clinton appointee) George Tenet.
That doesn’t mean Brennan’s advice is bad; in fact, he probably can offer any presidential candidate great insight into the inner-workings of the intelligence world. And the fact that one of Brennan’s employees has been implicated in the passport scandal should not automatically tar Brennan – as the Times story does, in order to also tar Obama.
But there can be no mistake from the copious public record that Brennan is a Company man, and if he owes any loyalty, it is to the people who have enabled his career: George Tenet, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
