The US President Barack Obama’s choice for his next counter-terrorism chief is Matthew Olsen, a former prosecutor with extensive experience in intelligence matters for the federal government, the White House has announced. Olsen would replace Michael Leiter.

The agency is charged with analysing and integrating information gathered across the intelligence community and then providing assessments to the President and other senior policy-makers.

Olsen, 49, currently serves as the general counsel for the National Security Agency. He has also held high-level roles in overseeing intelligence matters at the Justice Department and the FBI. From 2009 to 2010, Olsen directed the task force that, on Obama’s orders, reviewed the intelligence on detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.