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Retired US general to be Obama’s new intelligence chief | US President Barack Obama has picked retired Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr. as director of national intelligence. According to the New York Times, Lt. Gen. Glapper
Jr. is an officer with decades of experience and has been tasked with coordinating
the nation’s sprawling spy apparatus amid increasing threats at home and escalating
operations abroad. Obama plans to announce his choice in the Rose Garden on Saturday,
two weeks after forcing Adm. Dennis C. Blair out of the spymaster job. The selection
amounts to pushing the reset button for the president as he tries to recalibrate
an intelligence structure that has undergone continued revamping since the debacle
leading up to the Iraq war. General Clapper, 69, who retired in 1995 after 32
years in the Air Force, rose from a signals intelligence officer to Under Secretary
of Defense for Intelligence, overseeing all military spy operations. In picking
him, the president found an intelligence veteran who clashed with Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld and was pushed out of office as a result, only to return to
the Pentagon as a top lieutenant to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. If confirmed
by the Senate, Lt. General Clapper will be the fourth official since 2005 to oversee
the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies, a job created in the aftermath of the Iraq
intelligence failures. Some intelligence officials have portrayed the job as a
bureaucratic nightmare. Essentially, it involves coordinating some very powerful
intelligence chiefs, including the C.I.A. director, who have bigger budgets, their
own power bases and access to administration officials and members of Congress.
Obama has concluded that Lt. General Clapper’s experience would enable him to
fix a dysfunctional situation. Lt. General Clapper may face a fight to get confirmed.
The choice generated consternation in the Senate, where some Democrats and Republicans
complained that he is too closely aligned to the military, has resisted strengthening
the office he has been selected for, and has not cultivated close ties on Capitol
Hill. Some senators said that Lt. General Clapper lacked a forceful enough personality
and management style to assert control over the sprawling American intelligence
apparatus. He has an independent streak and has not been afraid to challenge bosses
in the past. |
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