WASHINGTON — John Brennan, President -elect Barack Obama’s top adviser on intelligence, took his name out of the running Tuesday for an intelligence position in the new administration.
Brennan wrote in a letter to Obama that he did not want to be a distraction. His potential appointment as CIA director has raised a firestorm in liberal blogs that associate him with the Bush administration’s interrogation, detention and rendition policies.
Brennan, a 25-year CIA veteran, helped establish the National Counterterrorism Center and was its first director in 2004. He has privately and publicly said that he opposed waterboarding and questioned other interrogation methods that many in the CIA feared could be later deemed illegal.
“It has been immaterial to the critics that I have been a strong opponent of many of the policies of the Bush administration such as the pre- emptive war in Iraq and coercive interrogation tactics, to include waterboarding,” he wrote. “It is with profound regret that I respectfully ask that my name be withdrawn from consideration for a position within the intelligence community.” The Associated Press
