London: John Brennan, who has been nominated by Barack Obama as the new director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), converted to Islam while working as a station chief in Saudi Arabia in the 1990s, a former FBI agent has claimed.
In a radio interview, John Guandolo, who retired from the FBI in 2008, said that Brennan visited the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina accompanied by Saudi officials who may have persuaded him to convert.
Guandolo told the Trento Radio Show via Skype that Brennan visited the holy sites during the Hajj season, while serving as CIA station chief in Riyadh between 1996 and 1999, a report on Al Arabiya News said.
According to the Daily Mail, the ex- FBI agent said that Brennan was 'unfit' to take charge of the CIA.
He added that U.S. Government officials based in Saudi Arabia during the period when Brennan worked there 'were direct witnesses to his growing relationships with individuals who work with the Saudi government and they witnessed his conversion to Islam'.
Brennan, 57, has spent more than three decades working in intelligence. He was nominated as the new head of the CIA on January 7 by Obama, after predecessor General David Petraeus was forced to resign amid a scandal surrounding an affair with his biographer.
The CIA is yet to respond to the MailOnline regarding Guandolo's claims about Brennan, it added.
(ANI)
First Published: Wednesday, February 13, 2013, 13:12