General James Clapper to serve as director of national intelligence, a senior administration official said Friday.
Clapper, a retired Air Force general, has served as the Pentagon’s top intelligence official since 2007 and also previously served as director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
As DNI, he would face the largely thankless task of wrangling the nation’s intelligence bureaucracy without the power of a large budget or the ability to hire and fire top officials. Dennis Blair, the last DNI, was asked to resign after he lost internal turf battles with CIA chief Leon Panetta and John Brennan, the White House’s counterterrorism czar.
Clapper is a personal favorite of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who selected Clapper as undersecretary of defense for intelligence in January 2007. When he stayed on in 2009, he became one of the few holdovers from the Bush administration in a top policy position.
Retired Air Force general to be DNI - Kasie Hunt - POLITICO.com
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