Filibuster effort to block Obama CIA nominee

Republican Senator Rand Paul attempted to block US president Barack Obama’s nominee to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, the long-serving Irish-American spy John Brennan, by “filibustering” or speaking exhaustively to obstruct a Senate vote on his appointment.

The Kentucky senator, a member of the right-wing Tea Party faction, said he would speak against the appointment “for as long as I can hold up”.

He opposes Mr Brennan’s appointment on the grounds of the use of unmanned aerial drones to kill terrorist suspects including US citizens overseas.

Mr Brennan, whose parents emigrated to the US from Co Roscommon, has orchestrated the drone strike campaign for the Obama administration, which was responsible for the killing of US citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical cleric, in September 2011.

A 25-year veteran of the CIA, Mr Brennan cleared the first hurdle on Tuesday on his way to becoming director of the US spy agency after the Senate intelligence committee voted 12 to three to confirm him.

Mr Paul’s filibuster will delay Mr Brennan’s appointment as the Senate must vote on his nomination to the top job at the CIA. “I can speak until I can no longer speak,” Mr Paul said as he began his speech shortly before noon yesterday, becoming the first senator to use the procedural roadblock in more than two years.

“I will speak as long as it takes, until the alarm is sounded from coast to coast that our constitution is important, that your rights to trial by jury are precious, that no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime, without first being found guilty by a court.”

At an earlier Senate judiciary committee hearing, Mr Paul clashed with US attorney general Eric Holder, who said the Obama administration had no intention of carrying out drone strikes in the US but could use them in response to “an extraordinary circumstance” such as a terrorist attack.