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President Obama’s national intelligence director told colleagues in a private memo last week that the harsh interrogation techniques banned by the White House did produce significant information that helped the nation in its struggle with terrorists. “High value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qa’ida organization that was attacking this country,” Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the intelligence director, wrote in a memo to his staff last Thursday. -snip- Admiral Blair’s assessment that the interrogation methods did produce important information was deleted from a condensed version of his memo...

On paper, it was a promotion. But Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta turned down a White House offer to become the next director of national intelligence anyway. President Barack Obama last week fired his intelligence chief, Dennis Blair, without an immediate successor teed up. People familiar with the matter said the White House had expected Mr. Blair would stick around until a replacement was found. Mr Blair declined. The struggle to find a successor has highlighted the challenges of filling an ill-defined job fraught with political tripwires. Mr. Panetta is one of a number of people who have turned...

(CNSNews.com) - Rep. Pete Hoekstra of Michigan, the ranking Republican on the House intelligence committee, says the resignation of Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair “is the result of the Obama administration’s rampant politicization of national security and outright disregard for congressional intelligence oversight.” ABC News reported today that President Barack Obama would be accepting Blair’s resignation tomorrow, and the Associated Press reported that the administration has already interviewed several candidates to replace him. Hoekstra, who formerly served as chairman of the intelligence committee, issued a written statement saying that Blair’s readiness to step down, considering his record of service...

ABC News has learned that President Obama will replace the Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair (ret.) His resignation will come as soon as tomorrow, sources tell ABC News. For several weeks President Obama has been holding serious conversations about whether to ask Blair to step down and has interviewed candidates to replace him. After a discussion this afternoon between the president and Blair in the Oval Office about the best way forward, Blair offered to resign and the president said he would accept, sources told ABC News. Multiple administration sources tell ABC News that Blair’s tenure internally has...

ABC News has learned that President Obama will replace the Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair (ret.) His resignation will come as soon as tomorrow, sources tell ABC News. For several weeks President Obama has been holding serious conversations about whether to ask Blair to step down and has interviewed candidates to replace him. After a discussion this afternoon between the president and Blair on a secure phone line about the best way forward, Blair offered to resign and the president said he would accept, sources told ABC News. Multiple administration sources tell ABC News that Blair’s tenure internally...

BREAKING: President Obama will replace his Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, POLITICO has confirmed. "We expect Admiral Blair to offer his resignation tomorrow," an official said. "We have been interviewing several strong candidates to be his replacement. "

National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair to Resign, Fox News Confirms

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - In unusually frank public comments, the top U.S. intelligence chief said on Wednesday that spy agencies could target Americans involved in terrorism but must get permission before a potentially deadly strike. "We take direct action against terrorists, in the intelligence community," Dennis Blair, director of national intelligence, said at a House committee hearing. "If ... we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that," he said, without mentioning where the permission came from. The Washington Post reported last week that President Barack Obama approved a December 24 strike against...

The United States is at risk of a crippling cyber attack that could "wreak havoc" on the country because the "technological balance" makes it much easier to launch a cyber strike than defend against it, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said Tuesday.

In congressional testimony on January 20, the nation’s top intelligence official, Dennis Blair, acknowledged that the U.S. government mishandled the interrogation of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian terrorist who tried to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day. Specifically, Blair was not happy that Abdulmutallab was charged as a common criminal and read his rights, rather than being questioned by the elite interrogation unit announced by President Obama as a replacement for the CIA teams used by the Bush administration. “I’d been a part of the deliberations which established this high-value interrogation unit [HIG],” Blair explained at a...

WASHINGTON – The nation's intelligence chief said Wednesday that the Christmas Day airline bombing suspect should have been treated as a terror suspect when the plane landed. That would have meant questioning him initially by special interrogators rather than standard law enforcement officers. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was interviewed by federal law enforcement investigators when Northwest Flight 253 landed in Detroit after he allegedly tried to detonate a homemade bomb sneaked through airport security in Nigeria and Amsterdam. Abdulmutallab is being held in a prison about 50 miles outside of Detroit. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told the Senate Homeland...

Heads are set to roll in the U.S. intelligence community as an angry Barack Obama fends off criticism over the attempted bombing of a passenger plane on Christmas Day. Publicly the White House is standing by the top spymaster in the U.S., intelligence chief Admiral Dennis Blair. The four-star admiral, who is responsible for coordinating intelligence gathering between 16 agencies, has the full confidence of the president, aides are insisting. But speculation was rife that Blair or Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano could be forced to resign after Mr Obama said on Tuesday there had been a systemic failure by...

Not a surprise, but still noteworthy: a heavy MSM hitter is now strongly suggesting that, post-NWA 253, a senior Obama admin official will be walking the plank. Say what we will of her, but Andrea Mitchell has her sources. So when the NBC correspondent declared on Morning Joe today that she suspects "somebody is either going to be resigning or forced to resign," we can pretty much take it to the [Federal Reserve?] bank. View video here.

Chris Wallace (filling in for Bret Baier)just reported that Fox News confirms that the CIA was tracking Northwest Airlines flight 253 bommber Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab since August. He did not say more than that. No wonder Obama spoke out again today about a systemic failure. He knew tis news was going to come out.This terrorist getting through our defenses is going to be the responsibility of his administration, not President Bush's.

The White House has published an internal memo to calm tension between CIA director Leon Panetta and Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, who is seeking increased control over covert operations, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday. The classified order asserts the Central Intelligence Agency's direct authority over secret missions abroad, but also reminds the agency to work closely with Blair, who heads the US intelligence establishment, a US intelligence official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity. According to the LA Times, Blair was seeking more control over missions that include drone strikes and paramilitary operations in Pakistan. Blair...

An illicit North Korean arms shipment seized in Thailand last week was destined for the Middle East, the head of US intelligence said Friday. About 30 tonnes of sanctions-busting weapons were confiscated in Bangkok on Saturday but it had remained unclear where the North Korean shipment was headed. "Teamwork among different agencies in the United States and partners abroad just last week led to the interdiction of a Middle East-bound cargo of North Korean weapons," Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, wrote in a commentary in the Washington Post. Blair's reference marked the first public comment by the administration...

CIA Director Leon Panetta and National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair squared off in May over Blair's effort to designate his own representative at U.S. embassies to be his personal eyes and ears abroad, instead of relying on CIA station chiefs. Two intelligence officials said Thursday that the CIA won a monthslong turf battle with the Office of National Intelligence, assuring the primacy of CIA station chiefs over other U.S. intelligence operations and personnel around the world. The territorial dispute was resolved only after it got all the way to the office of national security adviser Gen. James Jones. The CIA...

Mrs Janes asked why it was possible to save the banks but it was not possible to provide the materiel that could save soldiers' lives. Mr Brown sent her a hand-written note to apologise for her loss but the letter began ''Dear Mrs James'' and appeared to contain other spelling mistakes and a visible correction to her son Jamie's name. After the letter appeared in the press, he made a 13-minute phone call to apologise about the letter of condolence and, on Tuesday, apologised again during a Prime Ministerial press conference. Mrs Janes said he had appeared "humbled" but...

To the list of collegiate types -- nerds, jocks, Greeks -- add one more: spies in training. The government is hoping they'll be hard to spot. The Obama administration has proposed the creation of an intelligence officer training program in colleges and universities that would function much like the Reserve Officers' Training Corps run by the military services. The idea is to create a stream "of first- and second-generation Americans, who already have critical language and cultural knowledge, and prepare them for careers in the intelligence agencies," according to a description sent to Congress by Director of National Intelligence Dennis...

WASHINGTON - A turf war between the two senior intelligence chiefs over the role of CIA station chiefs in U.S. embassies has forced National Security Adviser James L. Jones to step in to mediate, according to current and former U.S. government officials. The jockeying between CIA director Leon Panetta and National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair centers on Blair's effort to choose his own representatives abroad instead of relying only on CIA station chiefs, the current and former officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the dispute.

WASHINGTON – The nation's two intelligence chiefs are locked in a turf battle over overseas posts, forcing National Security Adviser James L. Jones to mediate, according to current and former government officials. The jockeying between CIA Director Leon Panetta and National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair centers on Blair's effort to choose his own representatives at U.S. embassies instead of relying only on CIA station chiefs. Current and former U.S. officials described the dispute on the condition of anonymity, because of the sensitivity of intelligence issues.

Set aside for now the troubling changes in the Obama administration’s position on whether former Bush officials should be prosecuted for suggesting tough interrogation tactics against terrorists. Set aside the manifest unfairness of prosecuting lawyers merely for doing their job of giving legal advice. Set aside the raft of other reasonable objections to the proposed prosecutions, including a justifiable aversion to witch-hunts. Instead, consider how flagrantly President Barack Obama violated his repeated promises that he would run a transparent and honorable administration. His administration’s selective and highly prejudicial release of only partial information about CIA interrogations clearly was designed to...

Obama’s DNI reminds Obama that “enhanced interrogation” worked April 22, 2009 by Ed Morrissey Barack Obama’s top man in the intelligence community sent the President a memo defending the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, which the White House edited before releasing to the press de-emphasizing that defense. Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence, pointed out that most of what we know about al-Qaeda came from using those techniques on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah, countering leaks last week from the Obama administration that claimed the methods produced no data... In other words, the Obama administration covered up the...

The Obama administration has issued contradictory statements regarding its plans to prosecute Bush Administration officials over the use of harsh interrogation techniques of terrorism suspects. However, if President Obama is going to probe the Bush administration over its interrogation methods, it would behoove him to first investigate his own intelligence director, namely, Dennis Blair, over a terrorist massacre that occurred before a pivotal meeting in which Mr. Blair, then-commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, offered support and US aid to the commander of the massacre forces: The massacre took place at the Liquica Catholic church in Indonesian-occupied East Timor two...

The WSJ's Siobhan Gorman has a tale today about deep penetration of America's power grid by foreign hackers that has several on the wingnut side of The Force hyperventilating. However, Gordon's story hangs mainly on the anonymous say so of "and former national-security officials". The nearest she gets to named sources confirming this alleged penetration is Dennis Blair saying "we have seen cyberattacks against critical infrastructures abroad, and many of our own infrastructures are as vulnerable as their foreign counterparts.", which doesn't actually pinpoint power companies at all. In fact, the best knows infrastructure cyber attack, in Australia, was aimed...

The US government has endorsed a plan to build a new generation of spy satellites, although funding to boost the Pentagon's imaging capacity still needs congressional approval. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair said Tuesday that his agency and the Department of Defense had finalized a plan to modernize the fleet of US observation satellites. "Imagery is a core component of our national security that supports our troops, foreign policy, homeland security and the needs of our intelligence community," Blair said in a statement. He said the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), which oversees all US spy...

We’re not just letting terrorists GO FREE We’re going to give them WELFARE! “WE NEED SOME SORT OF ASSISTANCE FOR THEM…” Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, echoed yesterday the same eventuality that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder admitted, and that Move America Forward has been warning about for months now. Terrorist detainees from Guantanamo Bay are LIKELY coming to America. Not only that, but Blair went as far as to discuss all the wonderful things we are going to do for these terrorists, besides giving them the privilege of our American court system, it’s endless appeals process, and...

(snip) During his news conference, Blair also said the Obama administration is still wrestling with what to do with the remaining 240 detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, which the president has ordered closed. Some of the detainees, deemed non-threatening, may be released into the United States as free men, Blair confirmed. That would happen when they can't be returned to their home countries, because the governments either won't take them or the U.S. fears they will be abused or tortured. That is the case with 17 Uighers (WEE'-gurz), Chinese Muslim separatists who were cleared for release from the...

President Barack Obama's intelligence chief confirmed Thursday that some Guantanamo inmates may be released on US soil and receive assistance to return to society. "If we are to release them in the United States, we need some sort of assistance for them to start a new life," said National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair at his first press conference. "You can't just put them on the street," he added. "All that is work in progress

WASHINGTON – The Mexican government is not on the verge of collapse, the top U.S. intelligence official said Thursday, seeking to tamp down increasing alarm over the powerful and violent drug cartels operating in the country that is the United States' southern neighbor. "Mexico is in no danger of becoming a failed state," said National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair at his first news conference Thursday. Echoing the assessment of Mexico's leaders, Blair said the dramatic increase in killings in Mexico is a result of that government's crackdown on drug cartels.

Chas Freeman was not the only questionable selection by Intelligence Chief Dennis Blair. Newsweek is reporting problems with another pick another Blair pick: John Deutch. Deutch is a former head of the CIA who was a bit sloppy with our nations secrets : Add president Obama's national intelligence czar, Dennis Blair, to the list of embattled top-level appointees. Blair, a retired four-star Navy admiral who attended Oxford with Bill Clinton, courted controversy among pro-Israel and anti-China activists this month when he named Charles (Chas) Freeman, an outspoken former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, to chair the National Intelligence Council, a committee...

US Intelligence Director must have taken a sip of the "bad" kool aid. The kind only heard about in urban legends---spiked with some high tech LSD. That is the only explanation. Somehow he got he hands on the famed "brown acid" from Woodstock--the bad stuff (if you don't know what that is you are too young to understand). Yesterday Blair told congress that Tehran has not yet made the decision to pursue weapons....

Today The head of Intelligence for United States, Dennis Blair, testified before the Senate today. Joe Lieberman asked about the Freeman appointment and Blair spewed some outright lies to the Connecticut Senator. When Freeman's statements are looked at in context we can be sure that either Mr. Blair is lying or he never read the Freeman's emails.

As a quintessential member of the Dem foreign-policy establishment, you might expect Madeleine Albright to endorse Pres. Obama’s pick of Chas Freeman as a matter of course. But appearing on Morning Joe today, the former Secretary of State twice pointedly declined to endorse the president’s choice to head the National Intelligence Council. Adding insult to injury, Albright downplayed the extent to which she had worked with Freeman, and offered a laughably lukewarm description of his skills . . . I’d encourage those seeking more background on Freeman, this Saudi lapdog and apologist for the Tiananmen Square massacre, to read Rich...

National Security: Imagine one of China's and Saudi Arabia's mouthpieces in America writing intelligence reports for the White House. Meet Chas Freeman, who will soon fill all three roles.National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair has named Freeman to head his council of advisers, an influential post that, regrettably, does not require Senate confirmation. As National Intelligence Council chairman, Freeman will serve as a key intelligence adviser to President Obama and will prepare his daily briefings and the all-important National Intelligence Estimate on foreign threats. The job demands an uncompromising objectivity that Freeman can't possibly deliver, given his conflicts of interest involving...

Al-Qaeda is "less capable and effective" than it was a year ago after a series of damaging blows that have killed key leaders in Pakistan's tribal areas, the new US intelligence chief said. Nevertheless, retired admiral Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, said Al-Qaeda was still planning attacks on the West and is believed to view Europe as a "viable launching point."

President Barack Obama's choice for spy chief, Dennis Blair, said Thursday that U.S. intelligence agencies should seek ways of working with Iran on issues of mutual interest, underscoring the new administration's interest in engagement with elements in the Islamic state. "While policymakers need to understand anti-American leaders, policies and actions in Iran, the intelligence community can also help policymakers identify and understand other leaders and political forces, so that it is possible to work toward a future in both our interests," retired Admiral Blair said on Thursday in a prepared statement for a Senate hearing on his nomination as Director...

President-elect Barack Obama is expected to nominate Retired Admiral Dennis Blair as director of national intelligence, according to media reports Monday

Retired Adm. Dennis Blair, the former commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, is surfacing as a leading contender for the director of national intelligence, sources say. The director oversees the nation’s intelligence activities and is the principal adviser to the president and his National Security Council. In addition to leading Pacific Command and filling several high-powered jobs within the military, Blair was the associate director of central intelligence for military support, coordinating intelligence and military operations during the Clinton administration. He retired from the Navy in 2002. Blair receives high marks from those in the defense and intelligence communities. “He...

CHICAGO (Reuters) – U.S. President-elect Barack Obama is leaning toward selecting retired Gen. James Jones as White House national security adviser, ABC News reported on Thursday. Jones is among several candidates under consideration for the job, which coordinates foreign policy throughout the administration. James Steinberg, who was deputy national security adviser in Bill Clinton's administration, is also a candidate for the job. The ABC report said Jones had emerged as the leading candidate for Obama, who is said to value his advice and likes the idea of hiring someone for the job with more than four decades of active military...