| ID | 137974 |
| Title Proper | Mission |
| Other Title Information | unstoppable |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | Deeazen, Yochi |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | Dennis Blair was itching for a fight. In May 2009, the retired U.S. Navy admiral was serving as the director of national intelligence (DNI). Theoretically, Blair’s title gave him oversight of the CIA and Washington’s constellation of 16 other spy agencies. Yet, in reality, the director was powerless even to designate the senior American spy in a given country—a rank that, for decades, had traditionally been given to the CIA station chief in capitals from London to Beirut. Blair felt entitled to have charge over this. So sidestepping the White House, he sent a written order codifying that the DNI would now be the one to select the most senior spies. But there was one more important change: That person could be associated with any agency within the intelligence community. Though Blair said that the designee would almost always continue to be selected from the CIA, this didn’t sit well with the agency’s then director, Leon Panetta. He responded by shooting off a cable to all of the CIA’s overseas stations effectively telling them to ignore Blair’s memo completely. |
| `In' analytical Note | Foreign Policy Vol. , 212; May/Jun 2015: p.38-43 |
| Journal Source | Foreign Policy 2015-06 |
| Key Words | CIA ; DNI ; Al Qaeda ; U.S. Navy ; Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi |