'Undaunted': A former CIA director’s fight against America’s enemies

John O. Brennan served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency from March 2013 until January 2017. As CIA director, he was responsible for intelligence collection, analysis, covert action, counterintelligence, and liaison relationships with foreign intelligence services. From January 2009 to March 2013, Brennan was Deputy National Security Advisor and Assistant to President Obama for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, shaping and coordinating Obama administration policies on counterterrorism, homeland security, pandemics, cyberattacks, and natural disasters.

Brennan began his government service at the CIA (1980 to 2005). He served as CIA’s daily intelligence briefer to President Clinton, chief of staff to then Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, and deputy executive director. In 2003, he led a multi-agency effort to establish the National Counterterrorism Center and served as the Center’s first director. 

Spencer D. Bakich, a Miller Center nonresident senior fellow, is a professor of international studies and the director of the National Security Program at the Virginia Military Institute. He is the author of Success and Failure in Limited War: Information and Strategy in the Korean, Vietnam, Persian Gulf, and Iraq Wars (Chicago, 2014), as well as articles, book chapters, and essays on wartime diplomacy and strategy, coercive diplomacy, American grand strategy, and cybersecurity.

Barbara A. Perry is the Gerald L. Baliles Professor and director of Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, where she co-directs the Presidential Oral History Program. She has authored or edited 16 books on presidents, First Ladies, the Kennedy family, the Supreme Court, and civil rights and civil liberties. Perry has conducted more than 120 interviews for the George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama Presidential Oral History Projects; participated in the Bill Clinton interviews; directed the Edward Kennedy Oral History Project; and co-directs the Hillary Rodham Clinton Oral History Project. She served as a U.S. Supreme Court fellow and has worked for both Republican and Democratic members of the Senate.