John Brennan is the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
This agency provides our government with intelligence about the wars. It runs spies and clandestine operations. It assassinates people based on the intelligence it has gathered.
The guy in charge of running our spies and clandestine operations had laughable operational security.
[T]his hack exposes the Director of the CIA exercising almost laughable operational security.
The raging irony of WikiLeaks’ latest release: Inside the absurd hacking of CIA chief John Brennan, Marcy Wheeler, Salon
The files stolen from our Intelligence head, by a teenaged hacker, appear to have been there when John Brennan was Homeland Security advisor instead. He was the guy who protects our nation from hacking.
The files appear to date from the period leading up to Brennan’s appointment as White House Homeland Security Czar, where a big part of Brennan’s job was to prevent hacks in this country. To think he was storing sensitive documents on an AOL server — AOL! — while in that role, really demonstrates how laughable are the practices of those who purport to be fighting hackers as the biggest threat to the country. For at least 6 years, the Homeland Security Czar, then the CIA Director — one of the key intelligence officials throughout the Obama Administration — left that stuff out there for some teenagers to steal.
John Brennan is an idiot.
In December 2008, John Brennan withdrew from consideration for the position of director of the Central Intelligence Agency. His involvement in Bush-era interrogation policies and extraordinary rendition would have been what is called a distraction.
A former CIA official who was in the running for a top intelligence post in the Obama administration withdrew his candidacy today after coming under criticism from several groups who accused him of being closely tied to the agency's interrogation policies.
John Brennan, who held several senior positions during a nearly 25-year stint at the spy agency, notified Barack Obama of his decision in a brief note, saying he no longer wished to be considered for any job in the intelligence agencies. Brennan was widely reported to be a contender for either CIA director or director of national intelligence.
"The challenges ahead of our nation are too daunting, and the role of the CIA too critical, for there to be any distraction from the vital work that lies ahead," Brennan wrote.
Brennan Withdraws From Consideration for Administration Post, Joby Warrick, Washington Post
He became the Homeland Security Advisor instead, a position that does not require Senate confirmation.
In 2011, Brennan said there had not been a single collateral death from United States targeted killings, for nearly a year.
Asked on June 29 about US ‘targeted killings’, a euphemism which in this case referred to the CIA drone strikes, Brennan responded: ‘One of the things President Obama has insisted on is that we’re exceptionally precise and surgical in terms of addressing the terrorist threat. And by that I mean, if there are terrorists who are within an area where there are women and children or others, you know, we do not take such action that might put those innocent men, women and children in danger.’
He was more precise: ‘In fact I can say that the types of operations… that the US has been involved in, in the counter-terrorism realm, that nearly for the past year there hasn’t been a single collateral death because of the exceptional proficiency, precision of the capabilities that we’ve been able to develop.’
US claims of ‘no civilian deaths’ are untrue, Chris Wood, Bureau of Investigative Journalism
Which claim was not true.
To date, the Bureau has identified 45-56 civilian victims across 10 individual strikes – the most recent in mid-June 2011. The dead include six children.
There is also sufficient evidence to warrant further investigation into at least 15 further strikes, in which 66 or more additional civilians may have died.
US claims of ‘no civilian deaths’ are untrue, Chris Wood, Bureau of Investigative Journalism
In March 2013, John Brennan became director of the Central Intelligence Agency. On the Democratic side, there was not much distraction about it. Forty-nine Senate Democrats voted yea.
Patrick Leahy and Bernie Sanders of Vermont voted nay, along with Jeff Merckley of Oregon.
John Brennan is an idiot. He is director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and his emails have been hacked.
I mean idiot in a different way than I mean it about John Brennan here. It's more rhetorical. But also, what idiots ever voted him in for that position?