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Aug 4 2009, 6:40 am by Marc Ambinder

Brennan To Give Counterterrorism Speech

John Brennan, the president's chief counterterrorism adviser and a survivor of the Bush-era Central Intelligence Agency, will speak in public for the first time since the inauguration. On Thursday, he's slated to deliver a speech on counterterorrism in the Obama era at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.  The speech will focus on the CT challenges facing the administration and the institutions the administration is building to contain them. Brennan's portfolio at the NSC includes the Department of Homeland Security, disaster coordination and cybersecurity. Brennan was Obama's first choice to be CIA director, but he withdrew in the face of congressional and public pressure over his ties to the Bush administration, where he served in key CIA operational positions and was the founding director of the government's terrorist threat integration center. Aides say that Obama appreciates Brennan's blunt-speaking manner and his direct experience with the controversial issues with which Obama has had to contend, including renditions, detention policies and interrogations. Brennan has served as the NSC's chief liaison to the president's detainee review task forces.

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mactbone

If by "ties to the Bush administration" you mean "support for torture" then yes, that was the concern.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/11/16/brennan/

Key quote:

SMITH: You know, this all becomes such a giant issue because the president has gone on record so many times saying the United States does not torture. If we acknowledge that this kind of activity [waterboarding] goes on, you know, what does that mean, exactly, I guess?
Mr. BRENNAN: Well, the CIA has acknowledged that it has detained about 100 terrorists since 9/11, and about a third of them have been subjected to what the CIA refers to as enhanced interrogation tactics, and only a small proportion of those have in fact been subjected to the most serious types of enhanced procedures.
SMITH: Right. And you say some of this has born fruit.
Mr. BRENNAN: There have been a lot of information that has come out from these interrogation procedures that the agency has in fact used against the real hard-core terrorists. It has saved lives. And let's not forget, these are hardened terrorists who have been responsible for 9/11, who have shown no remorse at all for the deaths of 3,000 innocents.

notavailable

Greenwald has corrected on multiple occasions the media spin about Brennan, correctly noting that it was not his tenure at the CIA during Bush that was problematic, but rather what was problematic was Brennan's support and defense of the torture policies.

In addition to his defense of Bush's torture policies, I hope Brennan gets grilled on Obama's civil liberty policies:
- Indefinite detention of detainees without charges
- Mutlti tiered justice system aimed at only one outcome
- Invocation of states secrets
- No investigation of lawbreaking during the Bush years
- Threatening to cut off cooperation with Britain if their courts disclose torture evidence.
... etc.

The recent Mohamed Jawad case should also provide some interesting questions for Mr Brennan. Where the court found no evidence to imprison Jawad and yet the Obama administration claims to have mysteriously and after six years uncovered some new evidence.

The reason Obama has had to "contend" with "controversial" issues is because he has done a 180 degree about turn on those issues. Which is why probably Obama has started appreciating Brennan.