page_title: James Clapper
section_title: In the media
hierarchical_section_title: James Clapper / In the media
caption_attribution_description: English: In a speech at the LBJ Presidential Library on Thursday, Sept. 22nd, 2016, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper discussed national security as we prepare for an election year change in the White House. Following his remarks, Admiral Bob Inman, former Director of the National Security Agency and Deputy Director of the CIA, and Stephen Hadley, former National Security Advisor, joined Clapper on stage for a conversation moderated by LBJ Library Director Mark Updegrove on the pressing national security issues facing our nation.
context_page_description: James Robert Clapper Jr. is a retired lieutenant general in the United States Air Force and is the former Director of National Intelligence. Clapper has held several key positions within the United States Intelligence Community. He served as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 1992 until 1995. He was the first director of defense intelligence within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and simultaneously the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. He served as the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency from September 2001 until June 2006.
  On June 5, 2010, President Barack Obama nominated Clapper to replace Dennis C. Blair as United States Director of National Intelligence. Clapper was unanimously confirmed by the Senate for the position on August 5, 2010.
  Following the June 2013 leak of documents detailing the NSA practice of collecting telephone metadata on millions of Americans' telephone calls, Clapper was accused of perjury for telling a congressional committee hearing that the NSA does not collect any type of data on millions of Americans earlier that year.
context_section_description: In 2003, Clapper, then head of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, attempted to explain the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq by asserting that the weapons materials were "unquestionably" shipped out of Iraq to Syria and other countries just before the American invasion, a "personal assessment" that Clapper's own agency head at the time, David Burpee, "could not provide further evidence to support."
  In an interview on December 20, 2010, with Diane Sawyer of ABC News, Clapper indicated he was completely unaware that 12 alleged terrorists had been arrested in Great Britain earlier that day.
  In February 2011, when mass demonstrations were on the verge of toppling Hosni Mubarak's presidency in Egypt, Clapper told the House Intelligence Committee during a hearing that:
  The term 'Muslim Brotherhood' ... is an umbrella term for a variety of movements, in the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried Al Qaeda as a perversion of Islam.... They have pursued social ends, a betterment of the political order in Egypt, et cetera. ... In other countries, there are also chapters or franchises of the Muslim Brotherhood, but there is no overarching agenda, particularly in pursuit of violence, at least internationally.
  The Obama administration took the rare step later that day of correcting its own intelligence chief after the statement drew scrutiny among members of Congress.
  In March 2011, Clapper was heard at the United States Senate Committee on Armed Services commenting on the 2011 Libyan civil war that "over the longer term" Gaddafi "will prevail". This position was loudly questioned by the White House, when National Security Adviser Thomas E. Donilon qualified his statement as a "static and one-dimensional assessment" and argued that "the lost legitimacy [of Gaddafi] matters." During the same hearing he was also questioned when he neglected to list Iran and North Korea among the nuclear powers that might pose a threat to the United States.
  In February 2016, Clapper cited the activities of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Islamic State and "homegrown extremists" as major threats to the United States.
  In March 2017, Clapper said on NBC's Meet the Press that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence had not obtained a FISA court order allowing the FBI to tap Trump Tower, rebutting Donald Trump's unsubstantiated claims that President Barack Obama personally ordered wiretapping of Trump Tower before the November election. Clapper stated "I will say that for the part of the national security apparatus that I oversaw as DNI, was there no such wiretap activity mounted against the president-elect at the time or as a candidate or against his campaign," but added that "I can't speak for other Title III authorized entities in the government or a state or local entity."
  Clapper also said that he saw no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. He stopped receiving briefings on January 20 and was "not aware of the counterintelligence investigation Director Comey first referred to during his testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee for Intelligence on the 20th of March". CNN stated that Clapper had "taken a major defense away from the White House."
  In May 2017, Clapper was criticized by some media outlets for a xenophobic remark in an interview with Chuck Todd from Meet the Press. He told NBC's Meet the Press that Russians are "almost genetically driven" to act deviously.
  On October 26, 2018, the New York Times reported that an explosive device addressed to James Clapper was delivered to CNN offices in Manhattan. Federal authorities are investigating.
caption: Clapper at the LBJ Presidential Library in 2016
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