Responding to an employment listing in The New York Times, Brennan began his long career in the CIA in 1980. After joining the Directorate of Intelligence (DI), the agency’s analytic branch, in 1981, he served with the State Department as a political officer at the U.S. embassy in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia (1982–84). He then had a variety of analytic assignments in the DI’s Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis (1984–89) before directing terrorism analysis at the Director of Central Intelligence’s Counterterrorist Center in the early 1990s. After acting as the CIA’s daily intelligence briefer for U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton (1994–95), he served as the agency’s chief of station in Saudi Arabia (1996–99), as chief of staff to CIA Director George Tenet (1999–2001), and as the CIA’s deputy executive director (2001–03). Thereafter he spearheaded the efforts of a number of agencies in forming the organization that became the National Counterterrorism Center, which he led as interim director before retiring from the CIA in 2005.
John Brennan, in full John Owen Brennan, (born September 22, 1955, North Bergen, New Jersey, U.S.), American intelligence officer who served as director (2013–17) of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). He was the first individual to rise through the ranks of the agency to become its director since Robert M. Gates did so in the early 1990s.
Brennan was the son of Irish immigrants. He grew up in North Bergen, New Jersey, and attended St. Joseph of the Palisades High School in West New York, New Jersey, before earning a B.A. in political science from Fordham University in New York City in 1977. As an undergraduate he also studied at the American University in Cairo (1975–76), where he learned Arabic. In 1980 he was awarded an M.A. in government (with a concentration in Middle Eastern studies) from the University of Texas at Austin.
odern Egypt dates back to 1922, when it gained independence from the British Empire as a monarchy. Following the 1952 revolution, Egypt declared itself a republic, and in 1958 it merged with Syria to form the United Arab Republic, which dissolved in 1961. Throughout the second half of the 20th century, Egypt endured social and religious strife and political instability, fighting several armed conflicts with Israel in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, and occupying the Gaza Strip intermittently until 1967. In 1978, Egypt signed the Camp David Accords, officially withdrawing from the Gaza Strip and recognising Israel. The country continues to face challenges, from political unrest, including the recent 2011 revolution and its aftermath, to terrorism and economic underdevelopment. Egypt’s current government, a semi-presidential republic led by Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has been described by a number of watchdogs as authoritarian or heading an authoritarian regime, responsible for perpetuating the country’s poor human rights record.
Islam is the official religion of Egypt and Arabic is its official language.[16] With over 100 million inhabitants, Egypt is the most populous country in North Africa, the Middle East, and the Arab world, the third-most populous in Africa (after Nigeria and Ethiopia), and the fourteenth-most populous in the world. The great majority of its people live near the banks of the Nile River, an area of about 40,000 square kilometres (15,000 sq mi), where the only arable land is found. The large regions of the Sahara desert, which constitute most of Egypt’s territory, are sparsely inhabited. About 43% of Egypt’s residents live across the country’s urban areas,[17] with most spread across the densely populated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria and other major cities in the Nile Delta.
Egypt is considered to be a regional power in North Africa, the Middle East and the Muslim world, and a middle power worldwide.[18] It is a developing country, ranking 97th on the Human Development Index. It has a diversified economy, which is the third-largest in Africa, the 33rd-largest economy by nominal GDP, and the 20th-largest globally by PPP. Egypt is a founding member of the United Nations, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Arab League, the African Union, Organisation of Islamic Cooperation and the World Youth Forum.
The United States had minimal dealings with Egypt when it was controlled by the Ottoman Empire (before 1882) and Britain (1882–1922).
Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser (1956–1970) antagonized the US by his pro-Soviet policies and anti-Israeli rhetoric, but the Americans helped keep him in power by forcing Britain and France to end their invasion in 1956 immediately. The Americans’ policy has been to provide strong support to governments that supported US and Israeli interests in the region, especially Egyptian Presidents Anwar Sadat (1970–1981) and Hosni Mubarak (1981–2011).
Between 1948 and 2011, the US provided Egypt with a cumulative total of $71.6 billion in bilateral military and economic aid. That is the largest amount given to any nation in the same period after Israel.[2]
CIA Director (2013–2017)
Nomination
Brennan being sworn in as CIA Director, March 8, 2013
Brennan at the White House in April 2013, discussing the Boston Marathon bombing
Obama twice nominated Brennan to serve as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.[10][11] Morris Davis, a former Chief Prosecutor for the Guantanamo Military Commissions compared Brennan to Canadian Omar Khadr, who was convicted of “committing murder in violation of the law of war”.[50] He suggested that Brennan’s role in targeting individuals for CIA missile strikes was no more authorized than the throwing of the grenade of which Khadr was accused.
On February 27, 2013, the Senate Intelligence Committee postponed a vote on the confirmation of Brennan, expected to be taken the next day, until the following week. On March 5, the Intelligence Committee approved the nomination 12–3. The Senate was set to vote on Brennan’s nomination on March 6, 2013. However, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul began a talking Senate filibuster prior to the vote, citing Obama and his administration‘s use of combat drones against Americans, stating “No one politician should be allowed to judge the guilt, to charge an individual, to judge the guilt of an individual and to execute an individual. It goes against everything that we fundamentally believe in our country.”[51][52] Paul’s filibuster continued for 13 hours, ending with the words: “I’m hopeful that we have drawn attention to this issue, that this issue will not fade away, and that the president will come up with a response.”[53] After the filibuster, Brennan was confirmed by a vote of 63–34. He was sworn into the office of CIA Director on March 8, 2013.[54]
Tenure
Two months after assuming his post at the CIA, Brennan replaced Gina Haspel, head of the National Clandestine Service with another unidentified, career intelligence officer and former Marine.[55][56] In June 2013, Brennan installed Avril Haines as Deputy Director of the Agency.[57]
In April 2014, Brennan visited Kyiv where he met with Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and First Deputy Prime Minister Vitaliy Yarema and purportedly discussed intelligence-sharing between the United States and Ukraine.[58][59]
In the summer of 2014, Brennan faced scrutiny after it was revealed that some CIA employees had improperly accessed the computer servers of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the wake of oversight of the CIA’s role in enhanced interrogation and extraordinary rendition. Brennan apologized to Senators and stated that he would “fight for change at the CIA”, and stated he would pass along the findings of the Inspector General on the incident.[60] After the incident, Senator Mark Udall (D-Colo.) stated he had “lost confidence in Brennan”.[61]
Brennan and James Clapper at the LBJ Presidential Library, September 16, 2015
Brennan and former National Security Advisers Sandy Berger and Brent Scowcroft in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, 2015
In December 2014, Brennan again came under fire when he defended the CIA’s past interrogation tactics as having yielded “useful” intelligence, during a news conference. While admitting that the actions of the CIA officers were “abhorrent”, worthy of “repudiation”, and had, at times, exceeded legal boundaries Brennan stated the CIA had also done “a lot of things right during this difficult time to keep this country strong and secured”.[62]
During testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee in June 2016, Brennan warned of the threat posed by ISIL claiming it had the ability to draw on a “large cadre of Western fighters” and reiterated the threats posed by lone wolf attackers, calling them “an exceptionally challenging issue for the intelligence community”. Brennan detailed ISIL’s size to the committee, specifying they had more fighters than al-Qaeda at its height and that they were spread between Africa and southwest Asia.[63]
Dynastic Successions Book 
.jpg){kind=link}
