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Assistant to President for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security John Brennan (l.) speaks as Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano listens during a media briefing at the White House.
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WASHINGTON - President Obama is lucky that Jersey boy John Brennan's dream of being director of the CIA didn't come true.
Amid frenzied finger-pointing over a terrorist mistakenly let aboard a Christmas Day flight, his White House counterterror adviser emerged from a life in the shadows and into the spotlight as the stand-up guy.
Team Obama got it wrong, Brennan and his boss admitted late last week, an admission that quieted critics - at least until congressional hearings begin this month.
Brennan confessed they underestimated an obscure terror group in Yemen and didn't connect it to air bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
"I told the President today I let him down," the stone-faced Brennan told reporters in the White House briefing room on Thursday, as he closed a blue folder containing his prepared remarks.
The unscripted contrition impressed critics.
"How often does anybody stand up at the podium and do that?" gushed Frances Townsend, who held the job under President George Bush and often faced the press. "Nobody else had the courage."
Certainly not Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
She stood at Brennan's side and suddenly frowned when he laid blame for the bomb fiasco at his own feet. In her turn at the mic, she offered no confession.
It was a study in contrast between a career politician and a career national security operative.
Brennan's improvised mea culpa was the kind of no-bull remark the CIA man was known for in a 30-year clandestine career.
"John says it as he sees it," said Kenneth Wainstein, who was counterterror adviser after Townsend. "I respect him for it."
During the 2009 transition, Brennan wowed Obama as a quick study who understood "what needed to be carried over" in counterterrorism from the Bush administration.
Brennan, 54, was raised on 74th St. in North Bergen and graduated from St. Joseph's High School in West New York and then Fordham College.
Daily News sports cartoonist Ed Murawinski remembers playing hoops with "Jumpin' John Brennan" back in the neighborhood - where he is still esteemed.
"He's always been a standup guy," Murawinski said.
Brennan joined the CIA in 1980 as an analyst - because Revolutionary War patriot and spy Nathan Hale was hanged on his birth date, he says - and rose to be Saudi Arabia station chief.
He was top aide to ex-CIA Director George Tenet, a briefer for former President Bill Clinton and the first chief of the National Counterterrorism Center under Bush.
Obama was going to name him CIA director until liberal bloggers falsely accused the anti-waterboarding Brennan of being a torture cheerleader under Bush.
Brennan was disappointed, but rallied and became deputy national security adviser instead.
jmeek@nydailynews.com
Amid frenzied finger-pointing over a terrorist mistakenly let aboard a Christmas Day flight, his White House counterterror adviser emerged from a life in the shadows and into the spotlight as the stand-up guy.
Team Obama got it wrong, Brennan and his boss admitted late last week, an admission that quieted critics - at least until congressional hearings begin this month.
Brennan confessed they underestimated an obscure terror group in Yemen and didn't connect it to air bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.
"I told the President today I let him down," the stone-faced Brennan told reporters in the White House briefing room on Thursday, as he closed a blue folder containing his prepared remarks.
The unscripted contrition impressed critics.
"How often does anybody stand up at the podium and do that?" gushed Frances Townsend, who held the job under President George Bush and often faced the press. "Nobody else had the courage."
Certainly not Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
She stood at Brennan's side and suddenly frowned when he laid blame for the bomb fiasco at his own feet. In her turn at the mic, she offered no confession.
It was a study in contrast between a career politician and a career national security operative.
Brennan's improvised mea culpa was the kind of no-bull remark the CIA man was known for in a 30-year clandestine career.
"John says it as he sees it," said Kenneth Wainstein, who was counterterror adviser after Townsend. "I respect him for it."
During the 2009 transition, Brennan wowed Obama as a quick study who understood "what needed to be carried over" in counterterrorism from the Bush administration.
Brennan, 54, was raised on 74th St. in North Bergen and graduated from St. Joseph's High School in West New York and then Fordham College.
Daily News sports cartoonist Ed Murawinski remembers playing hoops with "Jumpin' John Brennan" back in the neighborhood - where he is still esteemed.
"He's always been a standup guy," Murawinski said.
Brennan joined the CIA in 1980 as an analyst - because Revolutionary War patriot and spy Nathan Hale was hanged on his birth date, he says - and rose to be Saudi Arabia station chief.
He was top aide to ex-CIA Director George Tenet, a briefer for former President Bill Clinton and the first chief of the National Counterterrorism Center under Bush.
Obama was going to name him CIA director until liberal bloggers falsely accused the anti-waterboarding Brennan of being a torture cheerleader under Bush.
Brennan was disappointed, but rallied and became deputy national security adviser instead.
jmeek@nydailynews.com
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