Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) predicted today that White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan — President Obama’s pick for the next CIA director — will receive liberal opposition in his confirmation hearings because of drone strikes.
Brennan is already facing an uphill climb from Republicans who want to get to the bottom of Benghazi.
“The White House has portrayed him as a priestly figure that sits in a room in the White House with no windows and decides each day who he’s going to execute around the world with drones. I think the Left is actually going to have an interesting time interviewing him,” Corker said on MSNBC.
The senator bluntly said intelligence that lawmakers get off cable news is more reliable than that coming to Capitol Hill from Obama’s team.
“The intelligence community in general has not served us well. I mean, the kind of briefings that we get on the Hill are close to useless,” Corker said. “…I do think that just the intel and how we receive it, how we’re able to utilize that for policy-making decisions, is going to be an important aspect of what he’ll be testifying regarding, and also just how we are going to improve our human intelligence gathering that has certainly been remiss here in the past.”
Corker noted that he, like many of his colleagues, also has concerns about the nomination of former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) to the Pentagon.
“I want to probe is where he is on our nuclear posture. I know it’s not something that, you know, people talk about on a daily basis,” he said. “Some of the things that he said in the past about where we need to be as a country in our nuclear posture are very troubling to me, and especially at this moment in time when we’re supposed to be investing in nuclear modernization as a part of the START Treaty, and we’re not doing that.”
“On Hagel’s part I think there are serious policy concerns, and I think these hearings are going to make a great deal of difference as to whether he is confirmed or not.”
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