Reply #4: You have a great memory:

[tekisui]

Brennan withdraws name for top spy

Brennan was thought to be the leading candidate for the job. He was the former chief of staff to then-CIA Director George Tenet, former executive assistant to Tenet and former station chief in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Reporters and others were asking questions about what role Brennan played in the decision to "torture" high value targets. (Full letter here.)

NBC's Savannah Guthrie adds this statement from Obama transition spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter:

"John Brennan has served our nation with honor and is a man of talent and integrity. The President-elect accepts his decision to withdraw from consideration for a position in the intelligence community but he is grateful for John's contining assistance as a valuable member of our transition team. "

http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/11/25/1688701.aspx



John Brennan, Torture-Tainted CIA Prospect, Alarms Obama Supporters

Marc Ambinder reported Thursday evening that former National Counterrorism Center head John Brennan is Barack Obama's "favorite to be nominated director of the Central Intelligence Agency." According to Ambinder's sources, Brennan has been vetted and even begun recruiting his team.

The news has alarmed Obama supporters who remember Brennan best for his role in both faulty pre-war intelligence and agreement with Vice President Dick Cheney on torture.

Glenn Greenwald writes, "I'm both entirely unsurprised and basically undisturbed by the fact that Obama's most significant appointments thus far are composed largely of standard Washington establishment figures and pro-Iraq-War hawks." But Brennan is "a different matter."

To appoint someone as CIA Director or Director of National Intelligence who was one of George Tenet's closest aides when The Dark Side of the last eight years was conceived and implemented, and who, to this day, continues to defend and support policies such as "enhanced interrogation techniques" and rendition (to say nothing of telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping), is to cross multiple lines that no Obama supporter should sanction. Truly turning a page on the grotesque abuses of the last eight years requires both symbolism (closing Guantanamo) and substantive policy changes (compelling adherence to the Army Field Manual, ensuring due process rights for all detainees, ending rendition, restoring safeguards on surveillance powers). Appointing John Brennan to a position of high authority would be to affirm and embrace, not repudiate, the darkest aspects of the last eight years.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/21/john-brennan-torture-tain_n_145517.html