After the botched first attempt by Obama to put John Brennan in charge of the Counter Intelligence Agency, it took 4 years and an elaborate honey-trap to get a second shot at hitting the bullseye.

After the botched first attempt by Obama to put John Brennan in charge of the Counter Intelligence Agency, it took 4 years and an elaborate honey-trap  to get a second shot at hitting the bullseye.

Now the counter-terrorism adviser has come back to Langley as the top spook, he could return the favor to his steadfast protégé: step up to the media & legislative scrutiny of his agency’s past & future, deflect the negative publicity from a besieged president and exonerate him from alleged Hussein-style power-grab ambitions.  But does he have the chutzpah to face the music?

The shoo-in confirmation of the Deputy National Security Adviser for Homeland Security and Counter-terrorism as director of the CIA was supposed to be low-key non-event, fading into oblivion just as soon as announced.
But it didn't – and  the it's unlikely to escape the collective memory of the American people.

The public attention span has nothing to do – almost – with the character traits of the new Langley chief inexorably linked with the White House Nobel Laureate infatuation with the Black Ops, conducted by big boys with the best toys – remotely piloted aircraft – and rooted in the idealistic notion of ‘no prisoners left behind’.

The fleeting marriage of convenience between the GOPLINS and liberals – ‘the wacko birds on right and left that get the media megaphone’, as senator McCain so eloquently described it – to sabotage, again, the nomination of a CIA old hand ,and Obama’s dedicated drone dispatcher, has finally failed.

However, this tactical victory over Brennan's confirmation has already cost the US president dearly:  a strategic blowback, unprecedented in scope & scale.

Who would have thought that a steamy exchange of bodily fluids between the two West Point graduates, exposed as a Florida femme fatale and her shirtless federal fan, would topple director Petraeus and the sudden nomination of a new CIA chief would reignite a clamoring for transparency about torture and targeted killing, the agency’s old & new pet projects.

The Attorney General has gotten himself trapped into a proxy legal battle to justify the benign dictatorial aspirations of the POTUS to terminate without prejudice loose cannon US subjects in the USA and over yonder.

John Brenan should come to the rescue and cut that ‘I ain’t no nothing’ Hillbilly posturing: what does it say about the Commander in Chief when his pick for Spy-in-Chief, after all those years at the Farm, solemnly claims on camera to the whole world regarding EIT, enhanced interrogation technique, that “I don’t know what the facts are or what the truth is”?

Is that the kind of plausible deniability a pro like him is expected to sell to cover the tracks for his former & current boss at the White House?

At the confirmation  hearings, the nominee promised – or just paid lip service – that if confirmed, it would be ‘one of his highest priorities …to get his arms around’ the torture management program.

For Brennan, the question is no longer ‘if’ but when he’ll come clean – forget the moral high ground and ethical considerations – on  the efficacy of the nefarious EIT program, exposed by a Senate Intelligence Committee report on detention & interrogation.

Well, don’t hold your breath that the Lord of  the Spies will spill his guts even under duress of truth serum or electroshock therapy.

If Senator McCain doesn’t call his bluff, the two-term president will be guilty by association as the second-hand sidekick of ‘Dubya’ Bush in charge of the same flee-bitten CIA – Coercive Interrogations Agency.

Evgeny Khrushchev, RT

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