The Director of National Intelligence is a thankless job. Little wonder why the key administration position, which oversees coordination among the nation’s 16 intelligence agencies, has turned over four times in its five-year existence.
On Thursday, President Obama’s DNI James Clapper had a particularly rough day of it.
Thursday morning Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Libyan leader Moammar Qaddafi would prevail in Libya if left unchecked and said the rebels are “in for a tough road.” A statement of the obvious perhaps - but one that didn’t impress his critics when delivered publicly.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-MI) was later taken aback after Clapper named the countries posing the biggest “mortal threat” to the United States as Russia and China. Levin said he expected Clapper to have cited North Korea and Iran.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) went so far as to call for Clapper’s resignation, citing his series of stumbles.
Clapper has previously come under criticism for apparently failing to know about major terrorism arrests in Great Britain and for saying the Muslim Brotherhood is “largely secular.”
“Three strikes and you’re out,” Graham said Thursday in an interview on Fox News.
But the White House had a tough enough time deciding to tap Clapper last year after former U.S. Navy Adm. Dennis Blair resigned under pressure in mid-May. Republicans at the time criticized the Obama administration for making Blair take the fall for a series of intelligence failures, culminating in a nearly successful attempt to blow up a jetliner over Detroit on Christmas Day.
Rep. Peter King (R-NY), who was busy holding his controversial hearings on the radicalization of U.S. Muslims Thursday, last year accused the Obama administration of trying to make Blair the scapegoat for the administration’s intelligence failures.
“The problem was not with Dennis Blair, but with the White House itself, which, under [senior adviser] John Brennan, attempts to control intelligence policy beyond the scope of congressional oversight while withholding necessary information from Congress,” King told The Hill at the time.
Former Rep. Pete Hoesktra (R-IN), who was the ranking member of the House intelligence committee at the time, last year warned against hiring Clapper, calling him “exactly the wrong person” for the DNI job because of his resistance to keeping Congress informed.
It’s ironic, but Clapper’s misstatements and candor with Congress could very well be a direct result of trying to be more open and forthcoming in response to these attacks.
The White House moved quickly to come to Clapper’s defense, with spokesman Jay Carney saying that Qaddafi is “hunkering down” and the situation in Libya is changing day by day.
“It’s precisely why we and our partners are responding in the way that we are and that we have, and why the dynamic is changing day by day to enhance the pressure on him to force him to leave,” he said.
What of Clapper’s comments about Russia and China?
Carney tried to smooth it over by arguing that Clapper was only speaking about large scale capability, not actual real-time threats.
“Obviously, Russia and China are two of the three largest nuclear powers in the world,” Carney said. “Therefore, they have dangerous weapons and have the capacity. But he made clear that we do not view Russia and China as a threat.”
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