Former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director Mike Pompeo’s hawkish instincts might seem at odds with traditional diplomatic norms, but after 14 demoralizing months of budget cuts and staffing reductions for the US Department of State, his conservative political bent and closeness to US President Donald Trump could breathe new vigor into an agency all too often sidelined on many of the US’ most pressing national security matters.
Pompeo, who is to become the US secretary of state, is expected to bring a new, blunt-speaking style to the job, strikingly different from outgoing US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s understated approach.
Pompeo is a career spymaster who oversaw torture at a secret prison during one of the darkest chapters in the CIA’s history.
Photo: AFP
Pompeo’s arrival in Foggy Bottom also promises far more aggressive stances on Iran and North Korea, and he will start with Trump’s full confidence — something Tillerson never enjoyed.
“One of the most important jobs for the secretary of state is to make clear to the world the president’s policies and priorities,” said US Senator Lindsey Graham, an establishment Republican and initial Tillerson backer on Tuesday, after Trump announced via a tweet that Pompeo would replace Tillerson.
“No one has a stronger relationship with President Trump than Mike Pompeo. This relationship will empower him throughout his tenure as secretary of state,” Graham said.
Tillerson had been widely criticized for an aloof management style, which had alienated droves of career diplomats and driven many of the agency’s senior brass into early retirements, but his foreign policy was far less controversial, as he hewed to much of the agency’s pragmatic approach, from climate change to free-trade agreements, and to preserving the Iran nuclear deal, even when that put him at odds with his president and his most conservative supporters.
In Pompeo, the diplomats and civil servants who make up the 70,000-strong department might now encounter the opposite: a fiercely partisan veteran of some of the most bitter battles in US Congress while he was a House Republican, and someone willing to jeopardize his reputation to defend Trump, as evidenced when he called up journalists to try to discredit a New York Times report outlining Trump campaign connections to Russia.
However, Pompeo also helped engineer a detente between Trump and the US intelligence agencies after the incoming president likened them to Nazis. In doing so, Pompeo never lost his access to Trump, or experienced a mass revolt to his leadership like Tillerson faced at the state department.
Meanwhile, Trump on Tuesday announced that he had chosen Gina Haspel to succeed Pompeo. She joined the CIA in 1985 and has been deputy director of the agency since February last year.
If confirmed, Haspel would become the first female head the agency.
She is described by colleagues as a seasoned veteran with 30-plus years of intelligence experience who would lead the CIA with integrity, but it is the few years she spent supervising a secret black site that will be closely scrutinized at her confirmation hearing.
Between 2003 and 2005, Haspel oversaw a secret CIA prison in Thailand where terror suspects Abu Zubayadah and Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri were waterboarded, current and former US intelligence officials said.
Waterboarding is a process that simulates drowning and is widely considered to be a form of torture.
Haspel also helped carry out an order to destroy waterboarding videos, which prompted a lengthy US Department of Justice investigation that ended without charges.
Trump has said that he would reintroduce waterboarding and “a lot worse,” but there is no indication that his decision to pick Haspel signals a desire to restart the harsh interrogation and detention program.
He would face steep legal and legislative hurdles if he tried.
US Senator John McCain said Haspel must explain the nature and extent of her involvement in the CIA’s interrogation program.
“Current US law is clear in banning enhanced interrogation techniques,” said McCain, who was beaten as a prisoner during the Vietnam War. “Any nominee for director of the CIA must pledge without reservation to uphold this prohibition.”
Human rights advocates said they opposed Haspel’s promotion to the helm of the CIA.
“No one who had a hand in torturing individuals deserves to ever hold public office again, let alone lead an agency,” Human Rights First’s Raha Wala said. “To allow someone who had a direct hand in this illegal, immoral and counterproductive program is to willingly forget our nation’s dark history with torture.”
After Haspel was named deputy CIA director, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights asked German prosecutors to issue a warrant for her arrest over her role in the interrogations. Federal prosecutors never issued the warrant because the case lacked a connection to Germany.
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