Central Intelligence Agency veteran John O. Brennan (FCRH ’77) has been named deputy national security adviser for homeland security in President-elect Obama’s administration. Brennan served as Obama’s foreign policy and intelligence adviser during the presidential campaign, and will now advise the president on counter terrorism.
Brennan was interim director of the National Counter-terrorism Center immediately after its creation, and since 2005 has served as CEO of The Analysis Corp. Since 2007, he has served as chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance.
An intelligence officer since 1980, Brennan began his career in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations. He has served with the Department of State as a political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; in a variety of analytic assignments in the Office of Near Eastern and South Asian Analysis in the Directorate of Intelligence; and was in charge of terrorism analysis in the DCI’s Counterterrorist Center during the Gulf War. Brennan has also served as the CIA’s daily intelligence briefer at the White House; the executive assistant to the director of the CIA, and as deputy executive director of the agency.
Brennan earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Fordham, including study at the American University of Cairo. He received a master’s degree in government with a concentration in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 1980.
