CIA Official: Obama Administration Warned of Egypt Instability in 2010

Stephanie O'Sullivan, nominated by President Barack Obama to the country's second-highest intelligence job, told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the US intelligence officials warned the administration "at the end of 2010" of instability in Egypt.

The top U.S. CIA official on Thursday said she was asked at her Senate confirmation hearing when the U.S. intelligence community warned Obama and policymakers that protesters might threaten Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's grip on power.

"We have warned of instability," she said. "We didn't know what the triggering mechanism would be for that. And that happened at the end of the last year," O'Sullivan said.

Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been criticized for being slow to grasp the scale of the upheaval in Egypt.

O'Sullivan stressed U.S. officials had been working tirelessly to analyze the broader, strategic impact of Arab unrest ever since the protests that ousted Tunisia's president after 23 years in power on Jan. 14.

"The events in Egypt are rapidly unfolding and the intelligence community is working flat-out to track them on the ground," she said, adding "But the minute things started earlier on in Tunisia, the intelligence community started looking at the long-term strategic impacts."

O'Sullivan, nominated to become deputy director for National Intelligence under director James Clapper, has 30 years experience in the US intelligence community.