In light of CIA Director Michael V. Hayden's virtual plea to be kept on in the Obama administration, it's interesting to look back at a similar instance in 1976, when George H.W. Bush tried to get President-elect Jimmy Carter to retain him as his spy chief.

Carter loved the CIA briefings he had been getting during his campaign against President Gerald R. Ford, according to the agency's official history of presidential transitions.

Sometimes the sessions, which usually took place at his modest home in Plains, Ga., went on for six hours.

"Carter was a very careful and interested listener and an active participant," writes longtime CIA official John L. Helgerson, the study's author.

"All who were present remember that he asked a great many questions, often in minute detail. He was especially interested in the nature of the Intelligence Community's evidence, including satellite photography of deployed Soviet weapons."

Later, after winning the election, Carter "seemed to enjoy and benefit from the substantive discussions held at Blair House during his visits to Washington in the transition period."

Not so, though, when Bush, a future president himself, came to Plains looking to keep his job as DCI.

Carter was cold, Helgerson writes.

"Carter was unambiguous in his response after Bush finished his discussion of the pros and cons of his staying on as Director. The DCI had finished with an observation that -- all things considered -- he probably should be replaced. The President-elect, according to Bush, 'simply said, okay, or something like this, with no discussion, no questions about any of the points I had made.... As in the rest of the briefing, Carter was very cold or cool, no editorializing, no niceties, very business-like."

During their talk, Bush described "more than a dozen sensitive CIA programs and issues" for Carter, the CIA history says.

In contrast to the lively sessions he'd been having with his regular CIA briefers, "Carter had virtually no comment and asked no questions during the whole session" with Bush, the CIA history says.

"He had not indicated whether he thought the operations were good or bad, or that he was surprised or not surprised. He asked for no follow-up action or information. Bush commented that Carter 'seemed a little impatient, he didn't say much but seemed to be a little turned off. He tended to moralize.'"

The former Navy submarine nuclear officer found some CIA operations not to his liking, according to the CIA history.

"In fact, Carter was 'turned off' and uncomfortable with many of the Agency's sensitive collection programs. He ordered some discontinued ..."

Carter's running mate, Minnesota Sen. Walter Mondale, tried to break the tension by complimenting Bush on his handling of the agency in the wake of a rash of revelations about CIA assassination plots and domestic spying carried out by his predecessors, "rather generously (saying) that things had gotten better since I'd been there."

But the three quickly moved on to "a discussion of the timing of the announcement of a new CIA Director-designate."

One of the reasons Carter cited for removing Bush, who had been a Republican congressman before being appointed as ambassador to the U.N. and later China by President Nixon, was that he wanted to "depoliticize" the CIA directorship.

Subsequently, "senior Agency officers later found it ironic that his first choice for CIA Director was Theodore Sorensen, the former Kennedy political adviser and speechwriter," Helgerson writes.

Sorensen was forced to withdraw his name within weeks of his nomination "because of mounting criticism that he had played a very political role in the [John F.] Kennedy administration."  His membership in a Harvard socialist club during the Great Depression also drew fire.

Sorenson was replaced by Adm. Stansfield Turner, whom many Agency veterans consider one of the worst CIA directors in its history, mostly because he fired legions of covert operatives in favor of greater reliance on technological means of spying, such as satellites.

Sorenson may have missed a bullet, his reputation sealed as a speech writer,  rather than soiled as a spy master.

Once referred to by Kennedy as his "intellectual blood bank," wrote probably the most famous line ever in a presidential inauguration: "We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

Within months, Kennedy fired his CIA director, Allen W. Dulles, following the Bay of Pigs disaster.

In light of CIA Director Michael V. Hayden's virtual plea to be kept on in the Obama administration, it's interesting to look back at a similar instance in 1976, when George H.W. Bush tried to get President-elect Jimmy Carter to retain him as his spy chief.

Carter loved the CIA briefings he had been getting during his campaign against President Gerald R. Ford, according to the agency's official history of presidential transitions.

Sometimes the sessions, which usually took place at his modest home in Plains, Ga., went on for six hours.

"Carter was a very careful and interested listener and an active participant," writes longtime CIA official John L. Helgerson, the study's author.

"All who were present remember that he asked a great many questions, often in minute detail. He was especially interested in the nature of the Intelligence Community's evidence, including satellite photography of deployed Soviet weapons."

Later, after winning the election, Carter "seemed to enjoy and benefit from the substantive discussions held at Blair House during his visits to Washington in the transition period."

Not so, though, when Bush, a future president himself, came to Plains looking to keep his job as DCI.

Carter was cold, Helgerson writes.

"Carter was unambiguous in his response after Bush finished his discussion of the pros and cons of his staying on as Director. The DCI had finished with an observation that -- all things considered -- he probably should be replaced. The President-elect, according to Bush, 'simply said, okay, or something like this, with no discussion, no questions about any of the points I had made.... As in the rest of the briefing, Carter was very cold or cool, no editorializing, no niceties, very business-like."

During their talk, Bush described "more than a dozen sensitive CIA programs and issues" for Carter, the CIA history says.

In contrast to the lively sessions he'd been having with his regular CIA briefers, "Carter had virtually no comment and asked no questions during the whole session" with Bush, the CIA history says.

"He had not indicated whether he thought the operations were good or bad, or that he was surprised or not surprised. He asked for no follow-up action or information. Bush commented that Carter 'seemed a little impatient, he didn't say much but seemed to be a little turned off. He tended to moralize.'"

The former Navy submarine nuclear officer found some CIA operations not to his liking, according to the CIA history.

"In fact, Carter was 'turned off' and uncomfortable with many of the Agency's sensitive collection programs. He ordered some discontinued ..."

Carter's running mate, Minnesota Sen. Walter Mondale, tried to break the tension by complimenting Bush on his handling of the agency in the wake of a rash of revelations about CIA assassination plots and domestic spying carried out by his predecessors, "rather generously (saying) that things had gotten better since I'd been there."

But the three quickly moved on to "a discussion of the timing of the announcement of a new CIA Director-designate."

One of the reasons Carter cited for removing Bush, who had been a Republican congressman before being appointed as ambassador to the U.N. and later China by President Nixon, was that he wanted to "depoliticize" the CIA directorship.

Subsequently, "senior Agency officers later found it ironic that his first choice for CIA Director was Theodore Sorensen, the former Kennedy political adviser and speechwriter," Helgerson writes.

Sorensen was forced to withdraw his name within weeks of his nomination "because of mounting criticism that he had played a very political role in the [John F.] Kennedy administration."  His membership in a Harvard socialist club during the Great Depression also drew fire.

Sorenson was replaced by Adm. Stansfield Turner, whom many Agency veterans consider one of the worst CIA directors in its history, mostly because he fired legions of covert operatives in favor of greater reliance on technological means of spying, such as satellites.

But Sorenson may have missed a bullet, his reputation sealed as a speech writer,  rather than soiled as a spy master.

Once referred to by Kennedy as his "intellectual blood bank," Sorenson wrote probably the most famous line ever in a presidential inauguration: "We shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty."

Within months, Kennedy fired his CIA director, Allen W. Dulles, following the Bay of Pigs disaster.

Adm. Dennis C. Blair, the former Pacific forces commander who once coordinated military operations at the CIA, is still on tap to become the nation's next top intelligence officer, despite an unexplained delay of an official announcement from President-elect Obama, sources familiar with the process say.

Blair has been touted as a shoe-in for the nomination by unnamed congressional and other anonymous sources.

But weeks have passed since his name first surfaced as a cinch for the Obama administration's director of National Intelligence.

Even in the absence of a formal announcement, however, Blair is being prepped for confirmation hearings on his expected nomination.

 "I know he's being prepared for his hearing," said a top former intelligence official, who also asked for anonymity in exchange for talking freely about the process.  

In contrast, the president-elect's national security team has had trouble finding an appropriate candidate to become the CIA's next chief.

One knowledgeable source said that the Obama team was "back to zero" on finding a CIA chief, an assertion rejected by a transition official.

Running the spy agency has become less attractive to personalities who once might have sought the position, sources say, ever since it was subsumed by the new national intelligence directorate (ODNI), set up after the surprise 9/11 attacks.  

"A lot of people don't want the job," said the source, because the CIA chief is no longer top dog in the fractious, 16-agency intelligence community, and no longer gives the President his daily briefing.  The Obama team has gone down "some blind alleys" in finding the right person, the source said.

Whereas in pre-9/11 times the job might have been a springboard to bigger things, now "it's a career ender" because it requires direct supervision of such contentious policies as renditions and interrogations.

"You've got to just really love it," a former top CIA official said,  "because it's too painful otherwise."

In 1995, Blair was appointed associate director of the CIA for military support, "responsible for direction and coordination of Intelligence Community support to military operations," acording to the agency's Web site.