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WASHINGTON – Former Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe, President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to head the CIA, said during his nomination hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee Wednesday that he wants to keep the CIA’s work apolitical. I vowed to make it stronger.
“Today, we face the most challenging national security environment in our nation’s history,” Ratcliffe said. “We will gather information, especially human information, from every corner of the earth, no matter how dark or difficult. We will never let political or personal bias cloud our judgment. We analyze all sources of information in an unforgiving, insightful and objective way.”
The committee will vote on whether to send Trump’s nomination to the full Senate after he formally nominates him. President Trump cannot formally nominate Ratcliffe until he is sworn into office on Monday.
Ratcliffe represented the 4th Congressional District from 2015 to 2020 before being confirmed as Director of National Intelligence in the Trump administration. Ratcliffe has been an ardent supporter of Trump throughout his time in Congress and defended the president through numerous investigations during his first term. He was part of the president’s legal team during his first impeachment in 2020.
However, Ratcliffe reportedly broke with the president after the 2020 presidential election. Former White House staffer Cassidy Hutchison said in 2022 that the president warned White House officials against attempts to overturn the election results for fear of harming the country’s democracy.
When the committee’s chairman, Sen. Tom Cotton, asked about Mr. Ratcliffe’s partisan background as a U.S. Representative, Mr. Ratcliffe said he would not allow partisan politics to cloud his work. He also keeps the Intelligence Committee informed of requests from the White House to remove intelligence officers and staff for political reasons and to prohibit political loyalty tests of any kind from the White House. promised to provide.
“I enjoyed my time in Congress, but I enjoyed my time even more as (Director of National Intelligence),” Ratcliffe told the committee, objectively asserting that he fulfilled the role. “It is imperative that the CIA director be apolitical.”
Ratcliffe said political interference includes interference from White House political interests and efforts to address diversity, equity, and inclusion in government agencies, calling it “politically motivated bureaucratic interference.” “A social justice issue imposed by the government.” He promised not to change his analysis to make it more convenient for President Trump, who has derided the intelligence community as part of the “deep state.”
Ratcliffe’s path to confirmation appears much smoother than the last time he faced Senate scrutiny. Ratcliffe was initially dropped as a candidate for director of national intelligence in 2020 after the Washington Post reported that he exaggerated his role in the 2008 crackdown on undocumented workers. But Trump pushed through with the nomination anyway, and Ratcliffe secured confirmation in the Senate in 2020 on a 49-44 vote, with not a single Democrat voting for him. He became the first person to be confirmed as director of national intelligence without support from opponents.
Ratcliffe is one of President Trump’s less controversial nominees this time around. In contrast to Tuesday’s testy questioning of Pete Hegseth, Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, by the Senate Armed Services, he faced no personal attacks from Democratic committee members on Wednesday.
“You clearly value the work of our intelligence agencies in general and the CIA in particular,” said Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. Warner noted that Ratcliffe previously served as Director of National Intelligence and as a member of the House Intelligence Committee.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a member of the Intelligence Committee, said Wednesday: “I am confident that you will do a great job as the next CIA director.” Mr. Cornyn has known Mr. Ratcliffe since he served as mayor of Heath, Texas, from 2004 to 2012, and supported Mr. Ratcliffe as a committee member during the DNI confirmation process. Both Mr. Cornyn and Mr. Cruz said they support all of Mr. Trump’s nominees this year.
If confirmed, Ratcliffe would report directly to President Trump’s new Director of National Intelligence. President Trump nominated former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard for the role, a far more controversial choice that drew backlash from Democrats, former intelligence officials and even some Republicans. I’m there. Gabbard has previously expressed sympathy for Russian President Vladimir Putin and ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The CIA will play an important role in the Trump administration’s foreign policy. President Trump has vowed to take a more hawkish approach toward China, the country’s biggest adversary.
The CIA has recently faced criticism for failing to predict the biggest foreign policy catastrophes of the Biden presidency, including the fall of Kabul in 2021 and the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) cited the fall of Afghanistan, Hamas’s attack on Israel, and South Korea’s declaration of war, saying, “The intelligence community that I most respect has recently made serious misjudgments. “There is,” he said. Martial law.
Mr. Ratcliffe promised to invest more heavily in human intelligence, or in Mr. Cotton’s words, “stealing secrets” to avoid future failures. He cited transnational criminal organizations across the southern border, Russia, Iran, and North Korea as pressing national security threats. But he said there is no greater threat than China, especially in the technology sector.
“Good decisions are hostage to good information and good intelligence,” Ratcliffe said. “The better we get at harvesting human intelligence, the better you can make decisions, the better your analysts can make analytical judgments, and the less intelligence gaps and failures you will have.”
The Senate Intelligence Committee is one of the most bipartisan committees in Congress. They often operate behind closed doors to discuss sensitive information. The committee continued questioning Ratcliffe in a closed session Wednesday after the hearing. Mr. Ratcliffe held off some of his detailed plans for countering his technology enemies for secret meetings.
