Who is John Brennan? Ex-CIA chief under fire over Trump-Russia probe; accused of pushing false intel

John Brennan , the former CIA director who once played a key role in America’s post-9/11 security strategy, is back in the news this time, not for stopping a threat, but for allegedly fuelling a political one.

A newly declassified report from the house intelligence committee claims Brennan and other senior officials from the Obama administration misled the public and distorted intelligence to support the narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump .


Who is John Brennan?

• Born on September 22, 1955, in North Bergen, New Jersey, Brennan was the son of Irish immigrants.
• Brennan served as the director of the central intelligence agency (CIA) from 2013 to 2017 under president Barack Obama.
• Brennan previously testified in 2017 that the Steele dossier, a now-discredited report, was not used in the official intelligence assessment of Russian interference. However, the new declassified material suggests Brennan insisted on including the dossier in the intelligence report, even though his top Russia analysts advised against it.
• It was Brennan who briefed president Obama in 2016 about Hillary Clinton ’s alleged plan to link Trump to Russia in order to distract from her own email scandal.
• After Donald Trump took office, John Brennan quickly emerged as one of his loudest critics. He regularly appeared on cable news, warning about what he called Trump’s “dangerous affinity for authoritarianism.” Brennan even accused the president of “treasonous behaviour” and claimed he was “wholly in the pocket of Putin.