Obama Picks New Head for Counterterrorism Center
Baku, July 2 (AZERTAC). President Barack Obama nominated a new head of the National Counter Terrorism Center on Friday: Matthew Olsen, best known for his time at the Department of Justice when he was the point man on relocating prisoners from the military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. If confirmed, he`ll succeed NCTC boss Michael Leiter, who will step down next week.
Mr. Olsen has kept a low profile over the past year as general counsel at the National Security Agency. Before that, at the Justice Department, he oversaw the Guantanamo Review Task Force, set up by President Barack Obama on his second day in office to figure out how to keep his campaign pledge of closing the controversial detention facility in Cuba.
The NCTC was established in 2004 to act as a clearinghouse for counterterrorism information and analysis, one of the big gaps uncovered in U.S. counterterrorism efforts at the time of the 9/11 attacks.
New leadership there will coincide with the administration`s first formal counterterrorism strategy, unveiled this week, and which says that al Qaeda, even without Osama bin Laden, is still the biggest threat facing the U.S.
The NCTC, in addition to its role as a clearinghouse for all the government agencies working counterterrorism, is unique in another way: It is almost without a doubt the only governmental counterterrorism website that boasts its own Kids Zone. No, there`s no Duck Hunter in Abbottabad, but there are coloring books featuring Liberty, Sam, and Beaker.
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