When Vice President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Robert Gates advised President Barack Obama in late April 2011 that sending a Navy SEAL team into Pakistan to capture or kill Osama bin Laden was not worth the various risks that this operation entailed, John Brennan, the president's top counterterrorism adviser, urged the president to authorize the raid. It's that kind of call that has made Brennan the president's go-to guy since the beginning of Obama's first term on all matters related to terrorism and has also thrust him into a broader policymaking role in the Middle East and in South Asia.
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John Brennan is up for a confirmation hearing before the Senate on Thursday
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The nominee for CIA director has been at the center of Obama's counterterrorism policies
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Peter Bergen says Brennan's been key in the drone program and in the bin Laden raid
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Bergen: Brennan supported the raid while Biden and Gates argued against it
Brennan will also likely be asked to discuss the still-classified Senate Intelligence Committee's three-year investigation into the CIA detainee program and the extent to which coercive interrogations of some of those @placeholder-held prisoners elicited useful information.