US Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is resigning after more than six years, he told the intelligence committee of the House of Representatives yesterday.
“I submitted my letter of resignation last night, which felt pretty good. I got 64 days left, and I think I’d have a hard time with my wife for anything past that.”
He will leave office with President Barack Obama on January 20, when president-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated.
Clapper has said for months he intended to leave when Obama departed and his replacement will be chosen by Trump.
The 75-year-old retired Air Force intelligence officer has spent most of the last 20 years as a civilian appointee to top posts in the US Defence Department and intelligence community.
In 2013, he denied in congressional testimony that the US intelligence community had large amounts of data on US citizens, which appeared to be contradicted by revelations later that year from US intelligence analyst Edward Snowden.
Snowden said in a 2014 interview with German broadcaster NDR that Clapper’s testimony was a determining factor in his decision to go public with what he learned while working for the US National Security Agency.
“I would say sort of the breaking point is seeing the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, directly lie under oath to Congress,” Snowden told NDR.
“There’s no saving an intelligence community that believes it can lie to the public and the legislators who need to be able to trust it and regulate its actions,” he said. “Seeing that really meant for me there was no going back.”
Clapper later said his response to the Senate was the “least untruthful” one he could provide.
The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) position does not have a set term limit.
In his campaign for president in 2008, Obama said he would “insulate the Director of Intelligence from political pressure” by setting a fixed term for the job.
However, Obama never followed through on that pledge, according to Politifact.
The position was created in 2005 as part of an overhaul of US intelligence agencies based on recommendations by the 9/11 Commission.
Clapper was the fourth person to serve as DNI.
Clapper’s formal letter of resignation was issued in response to a White House request that all Obama administration political appointees submit resignations effective at noon on January 20, a spokesperson for the Office of the DNI.
The leading candidates to take Clapper’s job in the Trump administration include Robert Cardillo, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and a previous deputy director of national intelligence under Clapper, according to national security officials and people close to Trump’s transition team.
Retired Lieutenant General Ronald Burgess, who headed the Defence Intelligence Agency during Obama’s first term, and former Republican Representative Pete Hoekstra, who chaired the House Intelligence Committee, also may be in contention, sources said.
The director of national intelligence oversees 17 US intelligence agencies and serves as the president’s principal intelligence adviser and briefer.
As deputy director of national intelligence, Cardillo had served as Obama’s “alternate” principal briefer, an official said.