Posted on 05/20/2010 3:30:44 PM PDT by afraidfortherepublic
ABC News has learned that President Obama will replace the Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Dennis Blair (ret.) His resignation will come as soon as tomorrow, sources tell ABC News.
For several weeks President Obama has been holding serious conversations about whether to ask Blair to step down and has interviewed candidates to replace him. After a discussion this afternoon between the president and Blair on a secure phone line about the best way forward, Blair offered to resign and the president said he would accept, sources told ABC News.
Multiple administration sources tell ABC News that Blair’s tenure internally has been a rocky one.
On the heels of a number of intelligence failures involving the Fort Hood shooter, failed Christmas Day bomber Umar Farouq Abdulmuttalab, and questions about failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad, it was no longer clear that Blair -- tasked with coordinating the 16 intelligence agencies and ensuring that they cooperate and share information – still had the full and complete confidence of the president, sources say.
One official tells ABC News that President Obama sought Blair’s resignation earlier this week, but Blair pushed back, hoping to convince the president to change his mind.
That did not happen.
The official says that there were high-profile problems on Blair’s watch such and those certainly didn’t help him, but the ultimate reason Blair is gone is because of the dissatisfaction President Obama and the National Security Staff had with Blair’s ability to share intelligence in a tight, coherent and timely way.
This was, the official said, the result of long pent-up dissatisfaction with Blair as the principal intelligence adviser to the president, responsible for briefing the president every day and briefing the National Security Staff. In short, officials didn’t think the briefings were relevant to what the president was focused on that day or time period. They weren’t crisp or well-presented.
At other times, Blair didn’t seem to take “no” for an answer, the official said. He was pushing an initiative dealing with intelligence and other countries, and he kept pushing it even after President Obama turned it down.
The news will not come as a surprise to those in the intelligence community. For months, Blair has turf battles while the White House made it clear that it had more confidence in others, such as counterterrorism and homeland security adviser John Brennan, taking the lead both publicly and privately.
Last November, the White House sided with CIA director Leon Panetta when Blair attempted, against Panetta’s wishes, to pick the chief U.S. intelligence officer in each country, a job that traditionally has gone to the CIA station chief.
At other points, Blair seemed simply out of the loop. In hearings looking into failed Christmas Day bomber Abdulmuttalab, Blair seemed unaware that the High-Value interrogation Group was not yet operational. He later walked back his statement.
Just this week – after a scathing report on intelligence failures and Abdulmuttalab by the Senate Intelligence Committee -- Blair acknowledged in a statement that “institutional and technological barriers remain that prevent seamless sharing of information.”
The Senate Committee report was a strong message of disapproval of the job being done by Blair and the National Counterterrorism Center.
Blair also noted some improvements to the National Counterterrorism Center, which he supervises, which now has a unit “to thoroughly and exhaustively pursue terrorist threat threads, including identifying appropriate follow-up actions by other intelligence and law enforcement organizations.”
Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg was one of those considered for the job, but is no longer being considered for the post.
-Jake Tapper
*This post has been updated with more information.
Can you say SCAPEGOAT?
exclusive?...FOX HAD IT two hours ago
I hear Bill Ayers is available.
Who’s he gonna hire?
Picking another progressive will still produce the same lamentable results.
Progressives are not exactly the sharpest knives in the drawer...heck, they aren’t even knives.
Is it possible for Obama to actually appoint someone worthy to head national intelligence. Having observed his track record, I think not.
Where’s Bill Ayers in Obama’s hour of need? Probably working up a list as I type.
Our intelligence has been terrible for many years now. They can put up another figurehead but it won’t much matter.
So now Leon Panetta, someone who knows NOTHING about national security, is fully in charge! Its what I have come to expect from the Obamas Royal Administration. More asshats in charge of things they know nothing about, or the blind leading the blind. God help us!
Let's see. What was Obama focused on during the undie bomber fiasco? Oh yeah, he was on vacation in Hawaii.
How about during the Ft. Hood massacre? Ummm I think he was busy b.s.ing someone about Obamacare.
Or was he busy dissing Israel? It's so hard to keep track of the boy king.
“National” and “Intelligence” just don’t seem to to be getting along currently.
May I suggest John Bolton for the job?
Is Blair the A$$ho7e who prepared that National Intelligence Estimate back in 2007 that said Iran has given up on its WMD program?
That NIE prevented Bush from attacking and probably will cause a terrible World War III.
Under the bus like the rest of em...
It's not enough.
Go where the buck stops.
Guessing that Blair DIDN”T KNOW ABOUT THIS UNTIL the NEWS CAME OUT!! FORCED RESIGNATION!!
Maybe POZNER from the State Dept will be named!!! NOTHING would surprise me!!
It’s getting pretty crowded under that bus.
Shut your mouth. BO might just do it.
Loose Lips Sink Ships... and countries.
Look for someone with these qualities:
Ugly.
Female.
Obese.
Lesbian
Will he be replaced by a ‘devout’ Muslim?
devout <=> radical
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.