Obama taps counter-terrorism profiteer as adviser on terror

Barack Obama has picked John O. Brennan as his top adviser on counterterrorism, a role that will give the CIA veteran a powerful voice on the government's use of security contractors and on other sensitive issues in which he recently has played a private-sector role. By appointing Brennan to a senior White House position not subject to Senate approval, Obama is also making him an influential adviser on the Middle East and on Iran. The president-elect's decision comes only six weeks after Brennan was forced to pull out of contention for the directorship of the CIA because of fears that his statements supporting some controversial interrogation techniques would have complicated his confirmation. The firm Brennan heads, the Analysis Corp., and its corporate parent have earned millions of dollars over the past decade assisting several federal agencies and private firms on counterterrorism. Those oil and telecommunications firms have worked in countries beset by violence, including Mozambique, Liberia, Colombia and Pakistan -- all of which have been topics of intense policy debate in Washington. The parent corporation, London-based Global Strategies, has been a target of critical news accounts about harsh actions by its hired soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Brennan also has attracted personal criticism from human rights experts for defending the CIA's long-standing practice of forced renditions, or transfers, of terrorism suspects for interrogations, a position that forced the withdrawal in late November of his candidacy to head the CIA. While Brennan has said he is uncomfortable about the CIA's practice of waterboarding, a simulated-drowning technique sometimes used on terrorism suspects, he has also made provocative comments about the agency's use of other interrogation methods. He told a PBS interviewer in 2006 that "we do have to take off the gloves in some areas," but without taking actions that would "forever tarnish the image of the United States abroad." The "dark side has its limits," he said at the time. His remarks and his tenure -- he was chief of staff to then-CIA Director George J. Tenet from 1999 to 2001 and director of National Counterterrorism Center from 2004 to 2005 -- provoked an open complaint against his nomination as CIA director from 200 psychologists. Brennan's appointment as Obama's close aide was disclosed shortly after the president-elect drew bipartisan criticism for his selection of a relative outsider -- former White House chief of staff Leon E. Panetta -- as the CIA's chief. The Democratic critics of that choice have since withdrawn their complaints. Obama aides said the president-elect accepted Brennan's assurances that he played no role in setting abusive interrogation practices at the CIA and that he had expressed some private dissent about the practices. They said Obama also accepted the judgment of transition team advisers that Brennan was separated from any questionable practices by Global Strategies, which formally purchased Brennan's firm in 2007. Since the election, Brennan -- who retains all his top security clearances -- has been conducting briefings for Obama on the CIA's ongoing covert actions. Brennan serves on the board of Global Strategies' North American subsidiary, along with a former director of the CIA's counternarcotics center and a former assistant secretary of state. Brennan, who has been on unpaid leave from the firm, plans to resign Jan. 19 and will have no further financial ties to it, according to a transition official. Two months ago, the firm won a large five-year contract to provide "intelligence expertise and support services" to the FBI. Obama also announced this past week that he would nominate William J. Lynn III as deputy defense secretary. Lynn, senior vice president of government operations for Raytheon, would run much of the Pentagon day to day if confirmed as Defense Secretary Robert Gates's deputy, and he would probably spearhead what Gates has said would be a new approach to acquisition. Lynn served as the Pentagon's chief budgetary and fiscal official in the job of comptroller from 1997 to 2001, and as a strategic planner from 1993 to 1997. Before that he was a staff member for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and focused on military matters. Lynn, who has a law degree from Cornell University, was previously registered as a lobbyist but deregistered in June.