WASHINGTON _ The top U.S. intelligence official told lawmakers Thursday he had resigned effective Jan. 20, saying handing in his resignation letter Wednesday night "felt pretty good."
James R. Clapper, who spent six years as Obama's director of national intelligence and served in key security roles during the George W. Bush administration, had long said he would resign at the end of the year.
"I handed in my resignation last night which felt pretty good," Clapper said at a hearing of the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday.
Clapper's resignation comes as the Trump transition team shakes up its national security transition team, firing former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers who had spent months building a team of intelligence and security advisers during Trump's campaign.
U.S. intelligence analysts are watching Trump's personnel picks closely to see what they will mean for U.S. policy toward Russia's hostile actions in Ukraine and attempts to return its sphere of influence to the lines drawn during the Soviet era. Trump has repeatedly said he wants to improve the U.S. relationship with Moscow and Russia's president, Vladimir Putin.
An intelligence official for more than 50 years, Clapper, 75, rose through the ranks at the height of the Cold War and during the dissolution of the former Soviet Union. He began his career as a military signals intelligence officer at a listening post in Thailand during the Vietnam War in 1963 and eventually rose to run the Defense Intelligence Agency under George H.W. Bush, and later was the head of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which manages the country's most secret reconnaissance satellite missions.
