John Owen Brennan

John Owen Brennan (born September 22, 1955) Brennan was approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee on March 5, 2013, to succeed David Petraeus as the Director of the CIA by a vote of 12 to 3.

In October 2020, Brennan was among 51 former intelligence officials who signed an open letter stating that the Hunter Biden laptop controversy had "earmarks of a Russian information operation". On January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order revoking the security clearances of Brennan and the other signatories. As of September 2025, a Department of Justice criminal investigation into Brennan was reported to be ongoing.

Brennan serves as a senior national security and intelligence analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. His inaugural appearance was on Meet the Press with Chuck Todd on Sunday, February 4, 2018.

Early life

Brennan was born and raised in North Bergen, New Jersey, His mother was born in Jersey City and was raised in Hoboken. His mother was a graduate of Sacred Heart Academy and employed by the Moore-McCormick shipping company as well as being an active community volunteer.

Career

Brennan began his CIA career as an analyst and spent 25 years with the agency.

On January 20, 2017, Brennan's CIA appointment ended, and he was replaced by President Trump's nominee Mike Pompeo on January 23, 2017.

In September 2017, Brennan was named a Distinguished Non-Resident Scholar at The University of Texas at Austin, where he also acts as a senior advisor to the University's Intelligence Studies Project. He serves as a consultant on world events for Kissinger Associates.

Counterterrorism advisor to President Obama

Brennan was an early national security adviser to then-candidate Obama. a claim that he repeated in 2013, during the Senate's hearings about whether to confirm him as Obama's CIA director. None of Brennan's superior officers at the CIA, however, recall hearing his objections, and in 2018, Brennan admitted to The New York Times, "It wasn't as though I was wearing that opposition on my sleeve throughout the agency. I expressed it privately, to individuals."

In an early December 2009 interview with the Bergen Record, Brennan remarked, "the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement communities have to bat 1.000 every day. The terrorists are trying to be successful just once." In the aftermath of the operation, Brennan said that the U.S. troops in the raid had been "met with a great deal of resistance", and bin Laden had used a woman as a human shield.

Drone program

In April 2012, Brennan was the first Obama administration official to publicly acknowledge CIA drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. In his speech, he explained the legality, morality, and effectiveness of the program.

In June 2011, Brennan claimed that US counter-terrorism operations had not resulted in "a single collateral death" in the past year because of the "precision of the capabilities that we've been able to develop". Nine months later, Brennan claimed he had said "we had no information" about any civilian, noncombatant deaths during the timeframe in question. The Bureau of Investigative Journalism disagreed with Brennan, citing their own research that initially led them to believe that 45 to 56 civilians, including six children, had been killed by ten US drone strikes during the year-long period in question.

According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Brennan's comments about collateral death are perhaps explained by a counting method that treats all military-aged males in a strike zone as combatants unless there is explicit information to prove them innocent.

CIA Director (2013–2017)

Nomination

Obama twice nominated Brennan to serve as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Paul's filibuster continued for 13 hours, ending with the words: "I'm hopeful that we have drawn attention to this issue, that this issue will not fade away, and that the president will come up with a response." After the filibuster, Brennan was confirmed by a vote of 63–34. He was sworn into the office of CIA Director on March 8, 2013.

Tenure

Two months after assuming his post at the CIA, Brennan replaced Gina Haspel, head of the National Clandestine Service with another unidentified, career intelligence officer and former Marine. In June 2013, Brennan installed Avril Haines as Deputy Director of the Agency.

In April 2014, Brennan visited Kyiv where he met with Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and First Deputy Prime Minister Vitaliy Yarema and purportedly discussed intelligence-sharing between the United States and Ukraine.

In the summer of 2014, Brennan faced scrutiny after it was revealed that some CIA employees had improperly accessed the computer servers of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the wake of oversight of the CIA's role in enhanced interrogation and extraordinary rendition. Brennan apologized to Senators and stated that he would "fight for change at the CIA", and stated he would pass along the findings of the Inspector General on the incident. After the incident, Senator Mark Udall (D-Colo.) stated he had "lost confidence in Brennan".

In December 2014, Brennan again came under fire when he defended the CIA's past interrogation tactics as having yielded "useful" intelligence, during a news conference. While admitting that the actions of the CIA officers were "abhorrent", worthy of "repudiation", and had, at times, exceeded legal boundaries Brennan stated the CIA had also done "a lot of things right during this difficult time to keep this country strong and secured".

During testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee in June 2016, Brennan warned of the threat posed by ISIL claiming it had the ability to draw on a "large cadre of Western fighters" and reiterated the threats posed by lone wolf attackers, calling them "an exceptionally challenging issue for the intelligence community". Brennan detailed ISIL's size to the committee, specifying they had more fighters than al-Qaeda at its height and that they were spread between Africa and southwest Asia.

In September 2016, the Congress passed the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) that would allow relatives of victims of the September 11 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia for its government's alleged role in the attacks. Congress overwhelmingly rejected President Barack Obama's veto. Brennan warned of the JASTA bill's "grave implications for the national security of the United States."

While director, Brennan created ten new "mission centers" in his campaign to focus the CIA on threats in cyberspace, where analysts and hackers work in teams with focuses on specific areas of the globe and particular issues. In addition, he created the Directorate for Digital Innovation (DDI) to hone the Agency's tradecraft in the information technology sector and create new tools dedicated to cyber-espionage. Despite general praise for his actions from within the intelligence community about Brennan's shift towards cyber, some CIA officials said they held reservations in moving away from traditional human intelligence. In January 2017, Brennan, alongside FBI director James Comey, NSA director Mike Rogers, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper briefed President-elect Donald Trump in Trump Tower on the findings of the intelligence community in regards to Russian election interference and the allegations contained in the Steele dossier.

British security hacker Kane Gamble, sentenced to two years in youth detention, posed as CIA chief to access highly sensitive information and hacked into Brennan's private email and iCloud accounts, made hoax calls to his family home and even took control of his wife's iPad. The judge said Gamble engaged in "politically motivated cyber terrorism."

Less than a week before Brennan left office in January 2017, he expressed several criticisms of incoming President Trump. Brennan said "I don't think he has a full appreciation of Russian capabilities, Russia's intentions and actions that they are undertaking in many parts of the world." Brennan stated that it was "outrageous" that Trump was "equating the intelligence community with Nazi Germany".

WikiLeaks hack

In October 2015, the contents of Brennan's personal AOL e-mail account were stolen by a hack and posted on WikiLeaks. The e-mails did not contain classified information but did include sensitive personal information, including a draft of Brennan's Standard Form 86 (SF-86) application. During a subsequent security conference at George Washington University, Brennan proclaimed his "outrage" at the hack but also demonstrated the need to "evolve to deal with these new threats and challenges". In January 2017, a North Carolina college student pleaded guilty in a Virginia federal court to charges relating to hacking Brennan's e-mail. The two North Carolina men eventually pleaded guilty to a conspiracy with a group that called itself "Crackas With Attitude" to commit unauthorized computer intrusions, identity theft, and telephone harassment. Justin Gray Liverman was sentenced to five years in federal prison and Andrew Otto Boggs was sentenced to two years. Other co-conspirators were located in the United Kingdom and were prosecuted by the Crown Prosecution Service.

Criticism of President Trump

Brennan helped establish the FBI’s counterintelligence investigation of Donald Trump’s campaign, which included the use of foreign intelligence, during the period leading up to the 2016 presidential election. Since leaving office, Brennan has been harshly critical of President Trump. In March 2018, Brennan said Trump had "paranoia", accused him of "constant misrepresentation of the facts", and described him as a "charlatan". Following the firing of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe later that month, Brennan tweeted to Trump:

Axios quoted Brennan tweeting a response to Trump's harsh comments about James Comey: "Your kakistocracy is collapsing after its lamentable journey... we have the opportunity to emerge from this nightmare stronger & more committed to ensuring a better life for all Americans, including those you have so tragically deceived. On July 16, 2018, Brennan tweeted his reaction to Trump's comments at the 2018 Helsinki summit meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin: Trump responded by calling Brennan a "total lowlife". Brennan was also the target of a mailed pipe bomb incorrectly addressed to "John Brenan", as were multiple other Democratic lawmakers, officials, and critics of Trump.

In December 2018, Brennan tweeted that Trump should prepare for the "forthcoming exposure of your malfeasance & corruption." One day after the release of the Barr letter in March 2019, Brennan said on MSNBC:

The Barr letter was criticized by many as deceptive after the release of the Mueller report weeks later, with Mueller writing to Barr that the letter “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of Mueller’s work.

On September 25, 2025, the day Comey was indicted, Trump suggested he might also indict Brennan.

Security clearance revocation

In a tweet on July 23, 2018, Senator Rand Paul accused Brennan of making money from his security clearance and he called for Brennan's clearance to be revoked. Adding in a second tweet, Paul said, "Today I will meet with the President and I will ask him to revoke John Brennan's security clearance!" Later, at a press conference on that date, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters that President Trump was considering removing the clearances of several of Obama's intelligence officials, including Brennan, saying, "The president is exploring the mechanisms to remove security clearance because they politicize and in some cases monetize their public service and security clearances."

On July 26, 2018, Huckabee Sanders read a statement from President Trump announcing he would revoke Brennan's security clearance, and on August 15, 2018, Sanders announced the revocation, but it never happened. She read a statement from Trump, dated July 26, that said Brennan's "lying and recent conduct, characterized by increasingly frenzied commentary, is wholly inconsistent with access to the nation's most closely held secrets and facilitates the very aim of our adversaries, which is to sow division and chaos". The statement said further, that Brennan had "recently leveraged his status as a former high-ranking official with access to highly sensitive information to make a series of unfounded and outrageous allegations – wild outbursts on the internet and television – about this Administration".

On August 16, Brennan stated that Trump's claims of no collusion with Russia were "hogwash":

Following the revocation announcement, 15 former senior intelligence officials and 60 other high-ranking former CIA officers protested the Trump decision in an open letter saying, "... former government officials have the right to express their unclassified views on what they see as critical national security issues without fear of being punished for doing so." Calling Brennan "one of the finest public servants I have ever known," retired Navy admiral William H. McRaven addressed President Trump in an op-ed saying, "I would consider it an honor if you would revoke my security clearance as well, so I can add my name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your presidency."

In an extensive interview on August 17, Brennan responded to Trump's decision to remove his security clearance, expressing alarm for the nation's national security in the statement:

On August 19, Brennan told the host of NBC's Meet the Press that he was considering legal action to prevent Trump from doing the same to others.

On May 25, 2019, The New York Times reported that the administration had never followed through on the bureaucratic process to revoke Brennan's clearance as the attempt was "hampered by aides who slow-rolled the president and by Justice Department officials who fought Mr. Trump, warning he was jeopardizing national security". Brennan called the executive order "bizarre" and said Trump had "misrepresented the facts" about the letter's contents.

In September 2025, Axios reported that a Justice Department criminal investigation into Brennan had been complicated after Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard revoked the security clearances of potential witnesses. According to administration officials, the witnesses were key to prosecutors' efforts to prove that Brennan had improperly influenced a 2017 intelligence assessment about Russian interference and allegedly lied about it to Congress in 2023. Brennan denied any wrongdoing.

Durham investigation

In March 2019, attorney general Bill Barr appointed United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut John Durham to investigate the origins of the FBI Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections, which involved some Trump associates. In December 2019, The New York Times reported that Durham was specifically scrutinizing Brennan's role. Durham interviewed Brennan for eight hours on August 21, 2020, after which a Brennan advisor said Durham told Brennan he was not a subject or target of a criminal investigation, but rather a witness to events.

Hunter Biden emails

In October 2020, Brennan was one of a group of 51 former senior intelligence officials who released an open letter stating that the Hunter Biden laptop controversy "has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation".

Books

(Available 10/06/2020)