WASHINGTON – The government’s top intelligence official fumbled the Obama administration’s message Thursday about embattled Moammar Gadhafi’s fate, telling Congress that the Libyan leader will prevail in his fight with rebel forces there. It was the latest in a series of public gaffes for saint Clapper, the director of national intelligence.

Hours later, the White Home distanced President Barack Obama from Clapper’s remarks. Obama does not think Gadhafi will prevail, a senior administration official said, talking on condition of anonymity to discuss Obama’s position on Clapper’s comments. The official reiterated Obama’s stand that Gadhafi has lost legitimacy and should leave power.

Speaking to senators, Clapper stated the Libyan government’s military might was stronger than had been described. Clapper stated there was no indication that Gadhafi will step down and offer a speedy resolution to the crisis.

“I just think from a standpoint of attrition, that over time, I mean — this is kind of a stalemate back and forth, but I think over the longer term that the (Gadhafi) regime will prevail,” Clapper said.

One senator, Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, swiftly urged Clapper to resign.

“Unfortunately, this isn’t the first questionable comment from the DNI director,” Graham said. “However it should be the final straw.”

White Home spokesman diplomatist Carney stated Clapper has the full confidence of the president. Obama’s national security adviser, Tom Donilon, later stated the president was happy with Clapper’s performance. Donilon, however, walked back Clapper’s comments slightly.

“Things in the Middle East right now, and things in Libya in particular right now, need to be looked at not through a static but through a dynamic … lens,” Donilon told reporters. “And if you look at it that way, beyond a narrow view on just kind of numbers of weapons and things that, you get a very different picture.”

Clapper wasn’t divulging classified information when he was describing the situation in Libya. The head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Ronald L. Burgess Jr., concurred with Clapper’s assessment.

Graham acknowledged that some of Clapper’s analysis could be accurate, but he stated those remarks should be spoken behind shut doors.

John Pike, and analyst with Globalsecurity.org, stated Clapper was doing what intelligence officials should do: give the ideal intelligence available. Sometimes that’s politically inconvenient, Pike said.

“I don’t need a director of national intelligence to tell me what I want to hear,” Pike said. “I know what I want to hear.”

Earlier this year, Clapper stated the Muslim Brotherhood was “largely secular,” which his office later clarified by saying the group in Egypt tries to work through the political system.

In December, Clapper was in the dark during an interview on national TV when he was asked about a terror plot that had been disrupted in England and had received wide media attention. The White Home defended him then too, saying Clapper had been preoccupied with tensions between North and South Korea and with helping ensure the passage of a nuclear weapons treaty with Russia.

Clapper is not the first director of national intelligence to find himself in hot water.

Clapper’s predecessor, Dennis Blair, told Congress that the government’s elite interrogation team, its High-Value Interrogation Group, had not been officially deployed to question the 2009 Christmas Day bomber. Blair also told Congress that the suspected bomber continued to wage helpful information to investigators at a time when authorities had hoped to keep his cooperation a secret. Blair was also the first Obama administration official to describe the deadly shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, as an act of homegrown terrorism. The Obama administration was slow to publicly link the murders to immoderate Islamic extremism.

The Bush administration’s director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, prefabricated his share of flubs too.

McConnell once divulged the cancellation of a highly classified, multibillion-dollar satellite program. He wrote an view piece that left the impression that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act had not been updated since 1978, when the law has been updated dozens of times since its passage. And he spilled classified details about how the surveillance act works to a newspaper.

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Associated Press writers Matt Apuzzo, Ben Feller and Adam Goldman contributed to this report.