I’m sure by now you’ve all heard that the new appointment to head DNI was a firm WMD believer, and if you haven’t, Jonathan Scwarz basically sums up everything you need to know.
I did find out two new bits of information from this NY Times piece:
The man President Obama chose last week to be director of national intelligence, Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr., argued in April against increasing the authority of the office as envisioned in pending legislation, Congressional aides said Tuesday.
In an April 28 memorandum to members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committees, General Clapper listed several reasons, Congressional and administration aides said.
General Clapper’s views are likely to be a major flashpoint during his confirmation hearings before the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Senators Dianne Feinstein of California and Christopher S. Bond of Missouri, the committee’s top Democrat and Republican, have repeatedly said the national intelligence director needs greater authority to effectively oversee the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies.
***One of General Clapper’s biggest supporters in the Obama administration is Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, a former C.I.A. director who brought the general back into government after he was forced out after clashing with former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
HE doesn’t want to expand DNI and he hates Rumsfeld- I suppose both of those work in his favor in my mind.
me
So, is Congress going to give the President the Clap?
cleek
Clap On!
bkny
pat lang suggests that his appointment dovetails nicely with gates’ efforts to eliminate dni:
http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2010/06/clapper.html
Mr Furious
The first thing I thought when I heard he clashed with Cobra Claw Rumsfeld was, “Good. He’s probably the right guy for the job.”
If it’s discovered that Cheney and Clapper had issues, I say fast-track him.
tkogrumpy
Perhaps the senate might want to ask him if he still thinks the WMD are in Syria
MattF
‘Strongly supported by Gates’ is most of what you need to know about the guy, as far as behind-the-curtain stuff is concerned. Also, I generally agree that centralization is not such a great thing in intelligence– Intel is a naturally messy and inefficient operation and efforts to make it all neater and more efficient generally end up as politicization.
D-Chance.
HE doesn’t want to expand DNI and he hates Rumsfeld…
I’d applaud him, but the lights would go out.
cat48
Ignatius had a good column on this today & why Obama ultimately picked him. It made sense.
Ash Can
So are the Republicans going to put a hold on him too?
Quiddity
I think Clapper’s WMD testimony rules him out. He did not have bulletproof evidence that WMD was being shipped to Syria. Instead, he surmised from increased “traffic”. That’s not professional, it’s political. I don’t see why Obama picked this guy who echoed Bush’s bogus claims.
(I just read the Obama quote at the linked story. Readers can draw their own conclusions about the veracity of what he said.)
Balconesfault
Seems a dislink between the concern over Clapper’s off-the-cuff WMD comments, and the following in Ignatius’ piece:
The DNI flap has been fascinating in what it shows about Obama’s approach to intelligence. He wants facts, not commentary; he mistrusts aides such as Blair who let their personal opinions show
NobodySpecial
Morons Who Hate Rumsfeld.
If there’s not a Facebook group, it should be.
Sheila
Does opposition to Rumsfeld really indicate anything positive? Let us remember that no-less-a-darkness than Henry Kissinger called Donald Rumsfeld “the scariest man I ever met.”
catclub
@Balconesfault:
I guess we are hoping he was NOT letting his true opinions show by going along with the boss – not quite saying WMD’s were going to Syria.
I hope he was waffling to please the boss when he said materials were going to Syria. He did not say WMD’s were going to Syria.
tim
Why the hell do you folks keep trying to give Obama cover?
He is promoting a freak who went out of his way to push a plain retarded narrative excuse for why Bush’s non existent WMD were never found, and you think it’s hard to understand why that might be?
Let me help you: O is aiding and abetting the continued coverup and escape from justice of the perpatrators of the Iraq and Afghanistan fiascos. It’s simple.
Please explain exactly why you people, John included, twist yourselves into knots trying to find other explanations, when the uncomplicated, very obvious and likely reasons are right in front of us.
Thank you.
Cat
A) Maybe he doesn’t want DNI central power to increase because he doesn’t want there to be actual oversight of the Intelligence Agencies.
B) He probably hated Rumsfeldfor the same reasons everyone else did, he was a narcissistic moron. It doesn’t take a lot of intelligence to think that of Rumsfeld.
C) This whole “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” will get you into bed with a lot of flea laden dogs. We aren’t exiled in the desert and are in desperate need for friends.
This guy is a crazy crackpot. The signs are pointing to Obama being a crazy crackpot when it comes to national security. Obama’s support of this guy and others from the Bush era Intelligence Agencies creeps me the hell out.
Balconesfault
The signs are pointing to Obama being a crazy crackpot when it comes to national security. Obama’s support of this guy and others from the Bush era Intelligence Agencies creeps me the hell out.
I don’t think that Obama is a crazy crackpot … I think that Obama realizes that no matter how good our intelligence is, at some point someone claiming Al Qaeda affiliation is going to kill some people in the US.
And to the extent that Obama hasn’t cleaned house of the Bush crowd, nor seriously prosecuted the torturers, he buys himself a measure of political cover if/when that bomb actually goes off in Times Square.
Yeah, he’ll be attacked either way, no doubt. But if the bomb goes off after Obama has done a complete housecleaning, another Dem might not get elected President for a decade. The real reason Bush beat Kerry in 2004 wasn’t the homophobe vote – it was the “pee in their pants over terrorism” vote.
srv
The DNI and all that is pretty irrelevant, except for making facebook look good when it comes to your privacy and security. Dirtyops is 99% military now, and has no real Congressional oversight. Hence, McChrystal and his bosses can do whatever they want, wherever they want, and nobody is paying any attention.
Now we’ll have one of the best enablers for WMD working on that Iran thingy.
Nobody could have foreseen…
As far as all of Rummy’s weaknesses – he didn’t want to stay in Iraq in the first place and he didn’t want to surge.
Seanly
Why do they always want Republicans for defense/intelligence positions? Aren’t they the ones who fucked everything up? Doesn’t this just play into Republican claims of Demcrats being soft on defense?
someguy
@Quiddity:
Yep. Because people who have opinions based on likelihoods rather than all the known facts are incompetent and shouldn’t be listened to…
Guess that means that 98% of the media and 105% of the internet should just STFU and sit down right now.
Captain Goto
@someguy:
Guess that means that 98% of the media and 105% of the internet should just STFU and sit down right now.
I can work with that…
Gene108
DNI needs to be scrapped. It was supposed to be an office to coordinate between the various intelligence agencies, but the office doesn’t have the teeth to actually punish an intelligence agency for digging in and defending their turf.
Whatever the actual goal of the office was, those with actual authority, like the head of the CIA, Defense Department intelligence, etc. really don’t care to deal with the DNI, which is why there’s been so much turnover for a very new position.
I think this guy’s going to be 3rd or 4th DNI head in 4-5 years.
Dr. Squid
Larry Johnson doesn’t like him either. Presumably he lost the Whitey Tape.
AxelFoley
If Larry Johnson doesn’t like him, he’s good enough for me! LOL
Dr. Squid
Dit Clapper? Toe Blake? Old time hockey?
joe from Lowell
One thing that James Clapper has going for him as the head of the intelligence apparatus is that he looks really sinister.
brantl
A whole bunch of nitwits hated Rumsfeld. He was an egomaniacal self-aggrandizing jerk. Anybody that liked him, didn’t know him.
mclaren
What, they couldn’t get General Jack D. Ripper?
If we’re lucky he’ll bring the Urantia flying saucer cult handbook to the confirmation hearing and start reading from it aloud.