James Robert Clapper Jr. (born 14 March 1941) was Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) from November 1991 to August 1995, succeeding Dennis Nagy and preceding Kenneth Minihan, and Director of National Intelligence from 9 August 2010 to 20 January 2017, succeeding David Gompert and preceding Mike Dempsey.
Biography[]
James Robert Clapper Jr. was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana on 14 March 1941, and he enlisted in the US Air Force in 1963, commanding a listening post in Udon Thani, Thailand and flying 73 combat support missions during the Vietnam War. Clapper rose to the rank of Lieutenant-General, and he served as Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 1991 to 1995, when he retired from active duty. He spent six years in private industry, and he served as Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency from 2001 to 2006 and as Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence from 2007 to 2010. On 5 August 2010, he was unanimously confirmed as Director of National Intelligence by the US Senate, but he was embroiled in controversy when he told a congressional committee that the NSA did not collect any data on millions of Americans, as his statements were later found to be perjury due to the June 2013 leak of NSA documents. In November 2016, he decided to resign as Director of National Intelligence, effective at the end of Obama's term. After retirement, he joined the Center for a New American Security think tank in Washington DC.