SpyTalk

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.