>>8988018
Early life
Brennan was born in North Bergen, New Jersey,[9] the son of Owen and Dorothy (Dunn) Brennan. His Irish father, a blacksmith, emigrated from County Roscommon, Republic of Ireland to New Jersey in 1948.[20][21] He attended the Immaculate Heart of Mary Elementary School and graduated from Saint Joseph of the Palisades High School in West New York, New Jersey.
Education
Brennan attended Fordham University, graduating with a B.A. in political science in 1977.[4] While a college student, in 1976, he voted for the Communist Party USA candidate for president, Gus Hall. He has later described his vote as a way of "signaling my unhappiness with the system", specifically the partisanship of the Watergate era.[21] After Fordham, Brennan attended the University of Texas at Austin, receiving a Master of Arts in government with a concentration in Middle East studies in 1980.[7] He speaks Arabic fluently.[9] His studies included a junior year abroad learning Arabic and taking courses at the American University in Cairo.[4][7]
While riding a bus to class at Fordham, he saw an ad in The New York Times that said that the CIA was recruiting. He decided that a CIA career would be a good match for his "wanderlust" and his desire for public service.[7] He applied to the CIA in 1980. During his application he admitted during a lie-detector test that he had voted for the Communist Party candidate four years earlier. To his surprise, he was still accepted; he later said that he finds it heartening that the CIA valued freedom of speech
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brennan_(CIA_officer)