By Connor Ryan
John Brennan, FCRH ’77 and President Obama’s choice as the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), rode a bus and two trains each morning from his family’s home in North Bergen, N.J. to Rose Hill’s campus for class. The trip clocked in at just shy of two hours.
Despite the long commute, Brennan’s Fordham experience unexpectedly put him on the road toward the CIA and, ultimately, the White House.
“In John Brennan, the men and women of the CIA will have the leadership of one of our nation’s most skilled and respected intelligence professionals — not to mention that unique combination of smarts and strength he claims comes from growing up in New Jersey,” President Obama said in his nomination announcement on Jan. 7.
While serving as President Obama’s first-term top counterterrorism adviser, Brennan picked up public notoriety for his involvement in high-profile assignments, including briefing the press on the Christmas Underwear Bomber in 2009 and the mission that killed Osama Bin Laden in 2010.
National attention aside, Brennan boosted his profile locally when he came to Rose Hill last May to deliver the 167th annual commencement address.
During his 18-minute speech, Brennan took time to explain how Fordham put him on his life’s path, praising John Entelis, a professor of political science, for “sparking an interest and a passion that would serve as a driving force throughout the course of my professional life, and which remains with me to this day.”
“A Middle-Eastern specialist, it was Professor Entelis who told my sophomore class one day about an opportunity to study abroad at the American University of Cairo,” Brennan said in his address. “He made me want to experience [the Middle East] for myself – to meet the people, understand their politics and study their culture, their language and their history.”
In class, Entelis remembered Brennan as being a quiet but ambitious student — a political science major without a clear plan for the future.
“He wasn’t a particularly active student in class but he was serious in the work that he undertook and that, I thought, was to his credit,” John Entelis, a professor of political science and director of the Middle East Studies Program, said in an interview. Entelis taught Brennan in two classes.
Brennan studied in Egypt during his junior year and then graduated from Fordham in 1977. He went on to get his master’s degree in government from the University of Texas and learned how to speak Arabic fluently.
Entelis said that he did not expect Brennan would be interested in the Middle East or want to study Arabic – much less go on to work at the CIA.
“I did get a sense that he became interested in the study of the Middle East and he was willing to go and study Arabic,” Entelis said. “[But] this is an Irish-American kid from New Jersey, and on the face of it he didn’t seem like he was destined to do serious study of the Middle East.”
Brennan was reportedly considering the priesthood and only seriously considered entering the CIA after seeing an advertisement in The New York Times, according to The Record newspaper in New Jersey.
Today, Brennan, 57, has become known for his strong work ethic and “priest-like presence in terrorism discussions for his devotion to just war,” says a recent article in The Atlantic.
During the 25 years he spent at the CIA, Brennan worked in the 1990s as the station chief in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He then became the chief of staff to George Tenet, the director of the CIA from 1997 to 2004.
President Obama considered naming Brennan director of the CIA in 2009, according to The New York Times, but Brennan removed himself from consideration after coming under fire from human rights advocates for supporting, or at least not attempting to stop, questionable interrogation tactics, including waterboarding.
Similar criticism was heard on campus last spring before Brennan came to speak.
“By choosing John Brennan for its 2012 commencement ceremonies, Fordham University is implicitly endorsing the ‘War on Terror,’ the use of rendition, the CIA’s heinous drone campaign and the subversion of the role of law in America, including the assassination of its own citizens,” read a petition created on Change.org by two Fordham students who graduated in 2012.
Brennan, who has been called “Obama’s Drone Czar” by The Atlantic for his leading involvement in America’s overseas drone program, responded to the criticism with a bit of a jab at his detractors during his address at Fordham in May.
“That’s what makes our country great – our individual ability to openly and freely express our views whether or not they are popular, whether or not they are in the minority or whether they are even based on misimpressions,” Brennan said during his commencement address. “And that’s why I still do my job.”
Rev. Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of the University, said in a statement released in May that he had met with Brennan, students, faculty members and members of the Board of Trustees on the morning of commencement regarding the concerns some had about Brennan’s appearance.
“I would like to thank both [Brennan] and the women and men who raised questions about his appearance for making this an occasion on which our graduates were sent out into the world with an important lesson on civic engagement,” McShane said.
If confirmed by the Senate, Brennan will be the second Fordham graduate to go on to become director of the CIA. William Casey, FCRH ’34 and a native of Queens, N.Y., held the job from 1981 to 1987.
