James Robert Clapper Jr. (born March 14, 1941) is a retired lieutenant general in the United States Air Force and 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 (DIA) 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 (NGA) 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. One senator asked for his resignation, and a group of 26 senators complained about Clapper's responses under questioning. In November 2016, Clapper resigned as director of national intelligence, effective at the end of President Obama's term. In May 2017, he joined the Washington, D.C.–based think tank the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) as a Distinguished Senior Fellow for Intelligence and National Security. In August 2017, CNN hired Clapper as a national security analyst.
Clapper was part of a group of former intelligence officials that signed a letter that stated the Biden laptop story “has the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation". It was in fact revealed the laptop contained no evidence of Russian disinformation, and portions of its contents have been verified as authentic.
Early life and education
James Robert Clapper Jr. was born on March 14, 1941, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, the son of Anne Elizabeth ( Wheatley) and First Lieutenant James Robert Clapper. His father worked in US Army signals intelligence during World War II, retiring as a colonel in 1972 then worked in security at George Mason University in the late 1970s and early 1980s. His maternal grandfather, James McNeal Wheatley, was an Episcopal minister.
Clapper graduated from Nurnberg American High School in West Germany in 1959 where his father was stationed at the time.
Clapper earned a Bachelor of Science degree in political science from the University of Maryland in 1963 and a Master of Science degree in political science from St. Mary's University, Texas in 1970.
Military career
After a brief enlistment in the United States Marine Corps Reserve, where Clapper served as a rifleman and attended the junior course of Platoon Leader Course he transferred to the U.S. Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps program. In 1963, he graduated as a distinguished military graduate from the University of Maryland and was commissioned as an Air Force second lieutenant. He served two tours of duty in Southeast Asia where he commanded a signals intelligence detachment based at a listening post in Thailand's Udon Thani Province, and flew 73 combat support missions in EC-47s, including some over Laos and Cambodia. Later, he commanded a signals intelligence (SIGINT) wing at Fort George G. Meade, Maryland, and the Air Force Technical Applications Center, Patrick Air Force Base, Florida. During the Persian Gulf War, Clapper served as Chief of Air Force Intelligence.
Clapper became Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in November 1991 under George H. W. Bush. While serving as DIA director, he oversaw the transformation of the National Military Intelligence Center into the National Military Joint Intelligence Center. He also launched an initiative to reorganize intelligence analysis by specialists in enemy weapons rather than specialists in countries and regions. The initiative failed because it created functional stovepipes which "reduced the coherence of the analytic effort", whereupon Clapper decided to restore the original organizational structure using strong regional elements. Clapper retired from active duty as a lieutenant general after thirty-two years of service in September 1995. In 1996, alongside General Wayne Downing, he was a member of the investigatory inquiry into the Khobar Towers bombing, which killed 20 people, including 19 American servicemen.