Jim Pavitt was the Central Intelligence Agency’s Deputy Director for Operations during the early post-September 11 period. John Kiriakou, who in his role as executive assistant to the DDO worked directly under Pavitt during the Iraq War and the early counterterrorism campaign, describes him as “a legendary officer and a really great guy.”[1]
Hostility toward Brennan
Pavitt’s personal antipathy toward John Brennan — distinct from and in Kiriakou’s account stronger than Kiriakou’s own dislike of Brennan — was a fixture of agency culture during this period:
Jim Pavitt, the Deputy Director for Operations, legendary officer and a really great guy. He hated Brennan more than I did. And he used to mock Brennan because Brennan at the time was telling everybody, ‘I want to head my own agency. I want to head my own agency.’[1]
The eventual institutional resolution — placing Brennan in charge of the Transnational Terrorism Information Center (TTIC, later the National Counterterrorism Center) — was, per Kiriakou, a sidelining: “They sort of shunted him off there and it was a nothing analytic organization, not even in the headquarters building. It was out one of the outlying buildings.”[2]