WASHINGTON - President-elect Barack Obama has selected retired Navy Adm. Dennis C. Blair to serve as the nation's next intelligence director but has not concluded his search for someone to lead the CIA, according to government officials familiar with the selection process.
Blair's nomination would make him Obama's point person on an array of highly charged intelligence issues the incoming administration will inherit from President George W. Bush. Among them are the allocation of resources amid two wars, the operation of secret CIA prisons overseas, and the wiretapping of e-mail and calls that pass through the United States.
Officials close to the Obama transition team sent mixed signals on when the president-elect might announce Blair's appointment, prompting some members of Congress to issue statements on the nomination even before it has been made official.
Missouri Sen. Christopher S. Bond, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, praised Blair's "long record of distinguished public service," and said the position called for a "strong leader who can work on equal footing with the Pentagon."
The confusion is the latest indication that the Obama team has struggled to assemble its intelligence team. Obama finished filling out the remainder of his Cabinet-level candidates yesterday before departing for a holiday vacation in Hawaii.
Rep. Hilda L. Solis, a California Democrat, was introduced as Obama's choice for labor secretary, and Obama introduced Rep. Ray LaHood, an Illinois Republican, as his nominee for transportation secretary. Their names had been leaked earlier in the week.
Obama also named Ron Kirk, Dallas' former mayor, to be U.S. trade representative and Karen Mills, a Maine venture capitalist, to head the Small Business Administration.
All four appointments are subject to confirmation by the Senate.
In a 34-year career in the Navy, Blair served as head of the United States Pacific Command, and spent a year at the Central Intelligence Agency in the mid-1990s as the agency's first associate director of military support, a position created to bolster cooperation between the agency and the Pentagon.
Thomas Wilson, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, described Blair, a former Rhodes scholar, as "very smart, very knowledgeable and very decisive."
