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Charles Dharapak / AP
FILE – In this Jan. 9, 2009 file photo, then President-elect Barack Obama listens as then-National Intelligence Director-dub Dennis Blair speaks during a news conference in Washington. A sway official says Blair is resigning.
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(05-20) 17:53 PDT WASHINGTON (AP) –
National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair is resigning subordinate to pressure from the White House, ending a tumultuous 16-month tenure marked by intelligence failures and spy agency turf wars.
Blair, a retired Navy admiral, is the third director of national intelligence, a social rank created in response to public outrage over the failure to intercept the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
His departure underscores the deranging inside the Obama administration’s intelligence apparatus, rocked over the more than six months by a spate of high-profile terror attacks that revealed starting a~ national security lapses. And it comes two days after a pure Senate report criticized Blair’s office and other intelligence agencies with regard to new failings that, despite a top-to-bottom overhaul of the U.S. tidings apparatus after 9/11, allowed a would-be bomber to enter a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day.
In a message Thursday to his drudge force, Blair said his last day would be May 28.
“It is by deep regret that I informed the president today that I demise step down as director of national intelligence,” Blair said.
The patience became inevitable following a meeting between President Barack Obama and Blair forward Thursday afternoon, according to two senior congressional officials. During the encounter, the officials said, it became clear that Blair had “lost the boldness of the president.”
Obama made no reference to Blair’s flinty tenure in a brief statement Thursday night that did not be aware of his impending resignation.
“During his time as DNI, our intelligence common has performed admirably and effectively at a time of great challenges to our over-confidence, and I have valued his sense of purpose and patriotism,” the president related. “He and I both share a deep admiration for the men and women of our knowledge community, who are performing extraordinary and indispensable service to our nation.”
Two other government officials said several candidates already had been interviewed towards the national intelligence director’s job, which is to oversee the community’s 16 intelligence agencies.
“We have been interviewing several strong candidates to be his replacement,” one official said.
All the officials spoke on situation of anonymity because the announcement had not yet been made. Blair’s declination was first reported by ABC News.
Blair’s term in position was marred by turf battles with CIA Director Leon Panetta and Blair’s recognize controversial public comments in the wake of the abortive Christmas Day jetliner bombing.
The brace congressional officials said Blair had been on a losing streak as he squared off with Panetta last May over Blair’s strain to choose a personal representative at U.S. embassies to be his eyes and ears abroad, instead of relying on CIA condition chiefs, as had been past practice.
Blair issued a directive declaring his intention to select his own representatives overseas. Panetta followed up shortly accordingly with a note telling agency employees that station chiefs were restrain in charge — a move that some construed as insubordinate and a lick to Blair’s authority.
The skirmish ended up costing Blair the patronage of the president’s top counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, who had been en~ to mediate.
In the failed Christmas Day attack, the Senate Intelligence Committee set that the National Counterterrorism Center was in a position to join intelligence that could have prevented it. As director of national notice, Blair oversaw the center.
One senior Senate staffer said it was visible Blair had been kept on the periphery of the FBI’s study into the Nigerian suspect in the attempted plane bombing, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
Blair’s later confirmation before Congress did not endear him to the White House, the officials before-mentioned, when he admitted that the elite interrogation team, the High-Value Interrogation Group, had not been officially deployed to point Abdulmutallab. Blair may have further damaged himself by admitting that he had not been consulted ~ward whether the HIG unit should have been used.
The HIG team was deployed following the Times Square bombing attempt this month, administration officials said this week.
Blair in like manner told Congress that Abdulmutallab continued to provide helpful information to investigators at a time whenever authorities had hoped to keep the bomber’s cooperation secret. With that advice divulged, FBI Director Robert Mueller confirmed at the same hearing that Abdulmutallab was cooperating.
Blair was the primitive Obama administration official to describe the deadly shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, final fall as an act of homegrown extremism. The administration had antecedently been reluctant to call the suspect, an Army psychiatrist, a homegrown terrorist or extremist.
By legal science, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, David Gompert, becomes the action director until the Senate confirms the president’s nominee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said.
Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, called Blair a bring about public servant.
“I had high hopes for his willingness to work with Congress on a bipartisan basis to ensure that America’s instruction professional had the tools, resources and authorities they need to aid protect our homeland,” Hoekstra said Thursday.
Some Republican lawmakers have criticized the Obama president and cabinet for not keeping them in the loop on key intelligence matters, often signaling out Obama’s Homeland Security and Counterterrorism adviser, John Brennan, during the time that being too secretive.
Former CIA Director Michael Hayden in April raised the end as well.
“The fact that Director Blair was not nearly for example visible as John (Brennan) was in the aftermath of the December 25th substance is something that 100,000 people in the intelligence community, I’m as~d, took note of,” Hayden said during a panel discussion. “That was not a pious thing.”
Hayden and other intelligence experts are concerned that the general intelligence director position has never been given the authority it necessarily to effectively oversee the nation’s vast and sometimes fractious quickness system.
Hayden said Blair needed to be seen as the “primordial legitimate spokesman for what goes well and what goes ill ~ of the American intelligence community.”
The top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee blamed Blair’s submission on him being overshadowed by Attorney General Eric Holder. Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., declared he heard about Blair’s resignation in news reports. Bond declared, “It must have been challenging to be forced on the sidelines ~ dint of. the attorney general but still catch all the blame for failings,” Bond related. “DNI Blair deserves this nation’s thanks for his long official function to our country.”
When Congress created the job in late 2004 since part of an intelligence overhaul, lawmakers intentionally kept the spy corypheus off the president’s Cabinet, adhering to the tradition that brightness officials should eschew politics.
___
Associated Press writers Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman contributed to this relate.
