The Enhanced Interrogation of John Brennan

[Editor's note - there are a couple of additions since the first posting: especially items relating to Sibel Edmonds and James Robbins]

Never mind this love-fest...

WaPo: John Brennan's confirmation hearing for CIA director

The enhanced interrogations of John Brennan being pursued by independent investigators are yielding astonishing reports. In our exclusive of June 2011 - Compromised by Birth - we put Brennan at the clandestine heart of the so-called "birther" controversy, either as one who scrubbed Obama's passport record (Jerome Corsi's allegation) or, as we argued, one who exploits that record as blackmail against Obama to keep him in line with the "natsec" (short for national security community) agenda, of which Brennan has been a low profile but central player. Just how central he has been to so many of the CIA misadventures and atrocities of recent times is finally coming to light, thanks in large part to veterans of "natsec" itself, who, upon Obama's appointment of Brennan to be Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), have come forth to report what they know about Brennan, all of it unflattering at best, and quite sinister at worst...

Consortiumnews: Brennan’s Loose Talk on Iran Nukes

“Fraudulent” is the inescapably appropriate adjective to describe the pre-Iraq-war intelligence conjured up by those (first and foremost George Tenet) who did the bidding of George Bush and Tony Blair. Former CIA colleagues who served under Brennan before and during the Iraq war tell us that, since he was such a close confidant of Tenet, Brennan almost certainly knew chapter and verse about the deliberate corruption of the intelligence on Iraq. And yet, we have no indication that you [Feinstein et al] have investigated whether Brennan was part of that fateful conspiracy...

Most vociferously in opposition to Brennan's nomination has been Michael Scheuer...

Foreign Policy Journal: John Brennan as CIA chief would serve his own interests, not America’s

Scheuer accuses Brennan of essentially protecting Osama Bin Laden in the 1990s when Brennan was, in the words of George Tenet, “CIA’s senior officer on the Arabian Peninsula.” Scheuer relates this anecdotal joke to convey the tight relationship between Tenet and Brennan:

Indeed, there was a popular joke inside CIA in the 1990’s which ran something like: “Question: Why is George Tenet never photographed from behind? Answer: Because they have not found a way to dislodge John Brennan’s nose.”

Corroborating this account is another CIA vet Larry Johnson...

NoQuarter: John Brennan Must Be Stopped

Then we have former CIA and Sate Department analyst Mel Goodman who, in disputing Brennan's claims that he was somehow out of the loop on renditions and torture, stated on...

Democracy Now: "He Was The Agency" - Ex-CIA Analyst Questions Brennan Claim He Couldn’t Stop Waterboarding, Torture

He was the agency. He was on the seventh floor of the agency. He was an executive assistant to the director [Tenet] and to the executive secretary [A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard] of the CIA.

Given his position, moving from “CIA’s senior officer on the Arabian Peninsula” to the CIA's top echelon at Langley with Tenet and Krongard, and considering a series of evidences, beginning with the close relationship between Tenet and then Saudi ambassador to the U.S. Prince Bandar, conveyed in such revelations as an "all-night shmooze" of the two on the evening of Sept. 8, 2001 (related in David Ottoway's The King's Messenger, Pg. 154), and of Tenet, drunk in Bandar's pool, screaming about Jews (related in in Patrick Tyler's A World of Trouble); then considering - by Senator Bob Graham's account - Bandar's financial support of at least two of the 9/11 hijackers through his BAE/Al Yamamah account in the Riggs Bank (later taken over by HSBC, the bank Obama's justice department has deemed "too big to jail"); then considering George Tenet's direct role - by Richard Clarke's accusation - in preventing the interception of the same hijackers that Bandar was funding; finally, as relates to Buzzy Krongard, when we consider - according to Max Keiser - Krongard's proximity to the United Airlines 9/11 put options through Alex Brown and Sons' Baltimore office; Tenet's and Krongard's deputy dog - John O. Brennan - becomes, to say the least, a "person of interest" in the 9/11/2001 stand-down.

Very tantalizingly, in a series of interviews concerning Operation Gladio "Plan B," Sibel Edmonds reveals - based on her time of FBI wire-tap translating in 2001-02 - that there were meetings held from 1997 through 2001 in Azerbaijan that included Ayman al Zawahiri, Prince Bandar and unnamed U.S. officials. When questioned about those officials, she says that some of them hold both official and advisory positions in the current Obama administration, as well as positions on the boards of top defense companies. Brennan, as counter-terrorism "czar" or as CIA director, would fit that description. Edmonds's comments come at 5:25 in the video at...

Corbett Report: Sibel Edmonds Answers Your Questions on Gladio B

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On Brennan's place in the British-Saudi axis...

LaRouchePAC: Brennan and Obama, British-Saudi Assets?

What LaRouchePAC misses however is Brennan's connection to British intelligence via Damien Perl's Global Strategies Group that we uncovered in Compromised by Birth II.

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There is also the matter of 9/11/2012 stand-down in Benghazi, leading to the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others, in which Brennan plays an even more central role. Such is the charge levied against Brennan in a recent E-book, Benghazi: The Definitive Report, by Jack Murphy and Brandon Webb. By this account, Stevens is said to have been at odds with the policies pursued by Brennan and Obama, including the overthrow of Qadaffi to begin with, and the spiriting of weapons from Libya into Syria, operations which Stevens was likely to obstruct; hence he as well as then DCI David Petraeus were kept out of the loop of  Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Maghreb run by Brennan himself. One of those military operations (mind you, long after the NATO mission had officially ceased) targeted a high level Al Qaeda operative in retaliation for which the Benghazi attack is said to have occurred. Since the State Department and CIA were unaware of the JSOC operations, they were hence unprepared for the likelihood of retaliation by the Al Qaeda affiliated Ansar al Sharia.

It is noteworthy that, as Murphy and Webb write, while "Stevens likely helped consolidate as many weapons as possible after the war to safeguard them..." his better judgement against their proliferation was overruled as "Brennan exported them overseas to start another conflict." This then is very much a gun-running (and not just gun-running, but very likely shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile-running) operation like that of Fast and Furious. So it should come as no surprise, though it was news to us, that as LaRouchePAC reports:

John Brennan Linked Through Kevin O'Reilly to Operation Fast and Furious

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Finally, on a less than serious note, courtesy of Glenn Beck's site...

The Blaze: EX-FBI AGENT CLAIMS OBAMA’S CIA NOMINEE IS REALLY A SECRET MUSLIM RECRUITED BY SAUDIS

But who knows? It is evident that Brennan was a bit miffed at challenges to his interpretation of the Islamic concept of jihad during a meeting with the editorial staff of The Washington Times...

WH counter-terrorism adviser Brennan storms out of TWT offices

James Robbins later revealed on facebook that he had received threats from the White House, from somebody apparently acting on behalf of Brennan. Robbins does not reveal the nature of the threats (likely they were in reference to his career opportunities) and he doesn't seem to take them very seriously; perhaps however given Brennan's attitude towards press freedom as argued in a college thesis, he should...

WhoWhatWhy: John Brennan In Grad School - Destroying Democracy Helps Save It