At the left hand of Obama, the right hand of Hillary. McDonough, seated, third from right in blue shirt, in the Situation Room during the Bin Laden raid, May 2011. Note, too, that he is seated at the table whereas various other VIPs are standing.
McDonough, described in one biographical sketch as a "tough guy" and "Obama’s single most influential foreign policy adviser," is also a personal friend and "basketball buddy" of the President of the United States.
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Background info (lengthy bio and background in Sipsey Street article)
...In 2000, McDonough returned to the States and began serving as a senior foreign policy advisor to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.
After Daschle's re-election defeat in 2004, McDonough became legislative director for newly elected Senator Ken Salazar of Colorado, leaving that position to take a slot as a senior fellow at the Clintonista think tank, the Center for American Progress, from 2004 to 2006 where he certainly ran into another future member of Obama's National Security Council, Dan Restrepo.
While at CAP, he co-authored a report in June 2006, No Mere Oversight: Congressional Oversight of Intelligence is Broken. Given McDonough's later role as the principal keeper of Obama's secrets and reputation, this argument for greater congressional oversight of the Bush Administration is at least heavily and deliciously ironic....
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Because of the refusal of the ATF and FBI at lower levels to allow "deconfliction" with the CIA and DEA, these complaints, according to the sources, were eventually forwarded to the National Security Council of the White House, including Kevin O'Reilly, a State Department employee seconded to the NSC, O'Reilly's boss Dan Restrepo, then Director of Western Hemisphere Affairs at the NSC and Denis McDonough, then NSC's head of Strategic Communication and since then promoted to the Deputy Director of the National Security Council....
The result, said one source, "The word came back from NSC, 'butt out.'"
McDonough is a name not previously mentioned in regard to the Fast and Furious investigation, although it has been established that by March, 2009, Phoenix ATF Special Agent in Charge William Newell was exchanging emails with O'Reilly and that Dan Restrepo was in turn being briefed on those communications by O'Reilly. Yet other sources have recently reported to this writer that O'Reilly, who was suddenly transferred to a State Department job in Iraq when the White House discovered that the Issa committee wanted to talk to him about his contacts with Newell, owes his continued Fast and Furious anonymity to McDonough.
Said the source, "NSC Deputy Director, Denis McDonough is the guy protecting Kevin O'Reilly," adding "DEA knows what O'Reilly did."
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These latest reports linking McDonough with Kevin O'Reilly and the "deconfliction" decision subsequent to the complaints by the DEA and CIA about gunwalking into Mexico place responsibility for the Fast and Furious scandal directly where many observers had suspected all along -- at the threshold of the door to the Oval Office." [!!!]
Extensive bio info on McDonough in the above Sipsey Street article.