President-elect Donald Trump’s selection to lead the CIA on Wednesday told senators he would not impose political litmus tests on the agency’s employees or force them to be loyal to Trump over the country. I promised.
President Trump has repeatedly portrayed the CIA and other spy agencies as corrupt agencies carrying out political objectives. But former Texas congressman John Ratcliffe, who was chosen by President Trump to lead the spy ring, spoke respectfully about the spy ring’s work during his Senate confirmation hearing, saying he didn’t have to deal with employees because of his political beliefs. I vowed not to purge.
Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), vice chairman of the Intelligence Committee, told Ratcliffe that he would “resist efforts to fire or remove career CIA employees because of their political views. We will not make the following demands of these employees.” Prioritize loyalty to politicians over loyalty to the nation. ”
Ratcliffe said he never took that approach as director of national intelligence during President Trump’s first term and that as CIA director he would not engage in partisan reforms.
“If you look at my record and my record as a DNI, that never happened. That’s never what anyone claimed,” he said. “That’s something I would never do.”
In written questions before the hearing, the committee asked Ratcliffe about President Trump’s pledge to “purge our nation’s national security and intelligence agencies of all corrupt actors” in 2023. There are many such people.
Ratcliffe responded that the quote attributed to Trump “may lack context and I am not in a position to comment.” But throughout his career, he said he found CIA employees to be “skilled professionals driven by mission, not political or ideological bias.”
Unlike other confirmation hearings, Ratcliffe’s two-hour hearing, followed by a closed session to discuss sensitive matters, ran smoothly with relatively little partisan rancor. Ratcliffe is expected to be easily confirmed by the Republican-controlled Senate, where he has been praised primarily for his work as director of national intelligence during the Trump administration’s first term.
Former intelligence officials, Democratic lawmakers and Western officials say Trump and his surrogates could undermine domestic intelligence efforts and prevent allies from sharing sensitive information by bringing politics into their conclusions and analyses. I am concerned that there is.
Trump’s relationship with the intelligence community has been rocky since the beginning of his first term in 2017. He and his supporters have portrayed government officials, along with the Justice Department and FBI, as part of a “deep state” plotting against him.
In response to a question from Sen. Angus King, R-Maine, Ratcliffe said he would not encourage intelligence professionals to change their assessments to avoid criticism from the White House, saying he would not encourage agency employees to “play politics.” He promised not to impose a “litmus test” or a test of “loyalty.”
King said he hopes Ratcliffe can persuade Trump to be more open to information provided by intelligence agencies.
“He’s famously skeptical of the intelligence community, but being skeptical isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” King said. “But I hope that one of the first things you can do working with him is to get him to accept the information and the truth that you provide as a result of your position.”
focus on china
Ratcliffe said his top priority as CIA director was the China threat and vowed to expand the agency’s focus on China.
“The Chinese Communist Party remains committed to economic, technological, and military domination of the world.”
The CIA “needs to continue and increase its focus on the threat posed by China and its ruler, the Chinese Communist Party,” he added.
In a written response, Ratcliffe said he would shift much of the CIA’s resources to gathering and analyzing information about China, praising current CIA Director William Burns for establishing the China Mission Center.
He said his efforts include “building breadth and depth of target expertise” and increasing “the number of personnel with linguistic capabilities in analytical and operational roles.”
Ratcliffe said he will increase intelligence gathering on China’s activities in new technologies and aim to counter Chinese efforts to exploit theft of U.S. intellectual property and research.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), chairman of the Intelligence Committee, said the CIA has become politicized and overly bureaucratic, and has lost focus on what he calls its core mission: collecting foreign intelligence, or “theft.” He said there was a need to return to secret. ”
Ratcliffe agreed that the CIA’s core mission is intelligence gathering and that it needs to prevent “complacency.” He said CIA officials who did not meet expectations would be held accountable.
Cotton said the CIA was able to predict a series of major world events, including Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, the strength of Afghan government forces fighting the Taliban, and the ability of Ukrainian forces to fend off a full-scale Russian attack. He said he did not. A large-scale invasion took place in 2022, and last month the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria was overthrown.
In questioning Ratcliffe, Cotton also referred to a Congressional-mandated but undisclosed internal investigation into the objectivity of the agency’s work among CIA employees. Mr Ratcliffe said he was familiar with the gist of the investigation, saying it showed there were significant concerns among employees about “objectivity”.
Ratcliffe said the study “reflects that a significant proportion of current CIA personnel have real concerns about the objectivity of the products they are producing, and in certain instances Even the PDB, which is the leading author, has even cited that concern.” . He did not elaborate.
The CIA did not respond to requests for comment.
Lawmakers from both parties also urged Ratcliffe to restart efforts to investigate the cause of the mysterious health outbreak known as “Havana syndrome” that has bedeviled intelligence officials and diplomats, first in Cuba. He then called for efforts to be made in other countries.
Mr Ratcliffe pledged renewed efforts to uncover the truth behind the health crisis, saying: this. “
Intelligence agencies were divided last week over whether a foreign enemy was responsible for unexplained injuries that included dizziness, severe headaches and other effects. A U.S. intelligence assessment released Friday found that two of seven anonymous spy agencies concluded that foreign attackers may have developed or deployed the weapons responsible for the incident. It became clear.
