John Brennan (CIA officer)

John Brennan (CIA officer)

John Owen Brennan is a former American intelligence officer who served as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from March 2013 to January 2017. Brennan began his CIA career as an analyst and spent 25 years with the agency. Brennan served in the White House as Assistant to the President for Homeland Security between 2009 and 2013. On August 15, 2018, President Donald Trump announced that he had revoked Brennan’s security clearance.

About John Brennan (CIA officer) in brief

Summary John Brennan (CIA officer)John Owen Brennan is a former American intelligence officer who served as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from March 2013 to January 2017. Brennan began his CIA career as an analyst and spent 25 years with the agency. Brennan served in the White House as Assistant to the President for Homeland Security between 2009 and 2013. On August 15, 2018, President Donald Trump announced that he had revoked Brennan’s security clearance. Brennan had harshly criticized Trump several times since his election and responded to the revocation by stating ‘My principles are worth far more than clearances. I will not relent’ Brennan was born in North Bergen, New Jersey, the son of Owen and Dorothy Brennan. His Irish father, a blacksmith, emigrated from County Roscommon, Republic of Ireland to New Jersey in 1948. He attended the Immaculate Heart of Mary Elementary School and graduated from Saint Joseph of the Palisades High School. Brennan attended Fordham University, graduating with a B. A. in political science in 1977. After Fordham, Brennan attended the University of Texas at Austin, receiving a Master of Arts in government with a concentration in Middle East studies in 1980. His studies included a junior year abroad learning Arabic and taking courses at the American University in Cairo. While a college student, in 1976, he voted for the Communist Party USA candidate for president, Gus Hall. He has later described his vote as a way of signaling his unhappiness with the system, specifically the partisanship of the Watergate era.

He was a daily intelligence briefer for President Bill Clinton. In 1996, he was CIA station chief in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, when the Khobar Towers bombing killed 19 U.S. servicemen. In 1999, Brennan was appointed chief of staff to George Tenet, then-Director of the CIA. He became deputy executive director of the Terror Threat Integration Center from 2003 to 2004. Brennan then left government service for a few years, becoming Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Alliance and CEO of The Analysis Corporation. He continued to lead TAC after its acquisition by Global Intelligence Solutions Group in 2007 and its growth as the Global intelligence Solutions division of GTEC. Brennan returned to government service with the Obama administration as Homeland Security Advisor on January 20, 2009, before returning to TAC in 2007. He is a senior national security and intelligence analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. Brennan was approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee on March 5, 2013, to succeed David Petraeus as CIA Director by a vote of 12 to 3. Brennan is married to his longtime girlfriend, Jennifer Brennan, and has a son, John Owen Brennan, Jr., and a daughter, Jodi Brennan. Brennan has two step-grandchildren, Jodie Brennan, a son-in-law, and a step-daughter, Jaleel Brennan, who lives in Washington, D.C. Brennan worked as a CIA analyst in the 1990s and 2000s in the Near East and South Asia. He also served as a National Counterterrorism Center director in Saudi Arabia.