President Obama yesterday said he will nominate John Pistole, the deputy director of the FBI, to manage the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), hoping to fill a key leadership post that has been vacant for more than a year.
Pistole will be the third nominee put forward by Obama since last September, beginning with Erroll Southers and then Robert Harding, both of whom withdrew from consideration this year.
Pistole began his career with the FBI in 1983 as a Special Agent and later as field supervisor of a white collar crime and civil rights squad. After 9/11 Pistole was appointed to the agency’s Counterterrorism Division, first as deputy assistant director for operations and then as assistant director. He then was appointed as the executive assistant director for counterterrorism and counterintelligence.
Pistole was appointed as deputy director of the FBI, the agency’s number two position, in Oct. 2004.
“I applaud the President’s choice of a career law enforcement official to head the Transportation Security Administration,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Me.), ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in a statement yesterday. “I have known John, who currently is the Deputy Director of the FBI, for many years. Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, he has been on the forefront of our nation’s fight against terrorism. While I will withhold my final judgment on this nomination until the Committee’s full examination and vetting processes are completed, I am pleased that the President has chosen an individual with such strong law enforcement experience.”