The Senate Intelligence Committee is scheduled to vote on President Barack Obama’s choice to lead the CIA after weeks of wrangling with the White House over access to top-secret information about the use of lethal drone strikes against terror suspects and the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.
The committee’s chairwoman, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, said the panel would move ahead on Tuesday with John Brennan’s nomination to lead the spy agency even as Republicans said they were frustrated with the Obama administration’s reluctant disclosure of all the records. Ms. Feinstein would not describe the material the committee has received because it is classified.
“Certain documents have been made available to members,” she said on Monday.
Mr. Brennan’s nomination has been held up as Democrats and Republicans on the intelligence panel have been pressing the Obama administration to provide them with a series of classified Justice Department legal opinions that justify the use of unmanned spy planes to kill terror suspects overseas, including American citizens. The senators have argued they can’t perform adequate oversight without reviewing the contents of the documents.
Key Senate Republicans have said they will oppose Mr. Brennan’s nomination unless they get classified information, including emails among top U.S. national security officials, detailing the Obama administration’s actions immediately following the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
Sen. Saxby Chambliss, the Intelligence Committee’s vice chairman, said, “We’re making progress” on the documents but left open the possibility he might ask Ms. Feinstein to delay Tuesday’s vote.
Sen. James Risch, said “no and no” when asked whether he was satisfied with the material the White House had provided. “They need to give us everything that’s out there,” said Mr. Risch, who is a member of the committee.
Mr. Brennan so far has escaped the harsh treatment that former Sen. Chuck Hagel, the president’s choice to lead the Defence Department, received from Senate Republicans even though Mr. Brennan is one of Obama’s most important national security aides and the White House official who oversees the drone program.
Mr. Brennan also served as a senior CIA official during President George W. Bush’s administration when waterboarding and other forms of “enhanced interrogation” and detention practices were adopted. Mr. Brennan has publicly denounced the use of these tactics, but the cloud hasn’t gone completely away.
Sen. John McCain has said Brennan’s stance on waterboarding and torture is inconsistent. Although Mr. Brennan has decried these methods, he also has said they saved lives, according to McCain, who said he is awaiting an explanation from Mr. Brennan. McCain and Sen. Lindsey Graham are also leading the charge for the Benghazi records.
“All we want is the answers,” Mr. McCain said Monday. “I’m not threatening anything. I just think we deserve the answers.”
Senate Republicans put Mr. Hagel through a bruising confirmation process. They labelled their former Republican colleague as a political turncoat for attacking the Bush administration’s handling of the war in Iraq, and cast him as hostile toward Israel, soft on Iran and unqualified for the job.
In attacking Mr. Hagel, who served two terms from Nebraska, the Republicans settled old political scores and won points with its conservative base by challenging Obama’s nominee so aggressively. The Senate confirmed Mr. Hagel last week to replace Leon Panetta as defence secretary on a 58-41 vote, with four Republicans joining the Democrats in backing the contentious choice.
Criticism of Mr. Brennan, by contrast, has been less intense. He was grilled for more than three hours during his Feb. 7 confirmation hearing before the Intelligence Committee, but also won praise from several lawmakers as the best qualified candidate to lead the CIA. Mr. Brennan, 57, is a veteran of more than three decades of intelligence work.
Former Congresswoman Jane Harman who spent eight years on the House Intelligence Committee, said she expects Mr. Brennan to be confirmed by a comfortable margin. Senate Republicans took Mr. Hagel’s nomination personally, she said, and they’re unlikely to take a similar approach with Mr. Brennan.
“I don’t think they’re going to try the same play twice and really seriously wound Obama’s national security team at a time when it’s very important that we project strength,” said Harman, president of the Wilson Center in Washington.
Mr. Brennan vigorously defended the use of drone strikes during his confirmation hearing. He declined to say whether he believes waterboarding, which simulates drowning, amounted to torture. But he called the practice “reprehensible” and said it should never be done again. Obama ordered waterboarding banned shortly after taking office.
Drone strikes are employed only as a “last resort,” Mr. Brennan told the committee. But he also said he had no qualms about going after U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in September 2011. A drone strike in Yemen killed al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, both U.S. citizens. A drone strike two weeks later killed al-Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, a Denver native.
Graham, one of Hagel’s most acerbic critics, said last month that the Obama administration deserved an “A-plus” for its drone program and he rejected an idea floated by Ms. Feinstein and other senators to establish a special court system to regulate drone strikes.
“I’m 100 percent behind the administration,” Graham said. “I think their program has been legal, ethical and wise.”
But Graham, along with McCain, said the failure to turn over the Benghazi records is a dealbreaker. Graham said Sunday on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that he and McCain “are hell-bent on making sure the American people understand this debacle called Benghazi.”
Mr. Brennan spent 25 years at the CIA before moving in 2003 from his job as deputy executive director of the agency to run the Terrorist Threat Integration Center. He later worked as interim director of the center’s successor organization, the National Counterterrorism Center.
When Bush’s second term began in 2005, Mr. Brennan left government to work for a company that provides counter-terror analysis to federal agencies. After Obama took office in 2009, he returned to the federal payroll as the president’s top counterterrorism adviser in the White House.
If confirmed by the full Senate, Mr. Brennan would replace Michael Morell, the CIA’s deputy director who has been acting director since David Petraeus resigned in November after acknowledging an affair with his biographer.
