Tag: Gina Haspel

Scoop: Gina Haspel threatened to resign over plan to install Kash Patel as CIA deputy

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CIA Director Gina Haspel threatened to resign in early December after President Trump cooked up a hasty plan to install loyalist Kash Patel, a former aide to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), as her deputy, according to three senior administration officials with direct knowledge of the matter.

Why it matters: The revelation stunned national security officials and almost blew up the leadership of the world’s most powerful spy agency. Only a series of coincidences — and last minute interventions from Vice President Mike Pence and White House counsel Pat Cipollone — stopped it.

Behind the scenes: Trump had spent his last year in office ruminating over Haspel. Some of the president’s hardcore allies, including Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo, were publicly raising doubts in his mind about Haspel. Continue reading.

Ex-CIA senior operations officer blasts Trumpification of agency — and explains how Pompeo ‘subjugated the country’s interests to those of the president’

AlterNet logoThe Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), founded in 1947 under President Harry Truman, has been in existence for 73 years and has dealt with foreign intelligence under 13 different presidents — the most recent being Donald Trump. In a February 10 article for Just Security, Douglas London (a retired CIA senior operations officer who left in 2018) takes a look at the state of the agency in the Trump era. And London, who now teaches at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., laments that in the last few years, the CIA has been acting in Trump’s interests more than in the foreign intelligence interests of the United States.

Mike Pompeo, now secretary of state in the Trump Administration, served as CIA director from January 2017 to April 2018 — and London recalls that when Pompeo was in charge of the CIA, “anything that could somehow embarrass the president or make him appear weak had to be avoided.”

The former CIA operations officer explains, “Pompeo prioritized shielding Trump from news he didn’t want to hear, an approach to the job that sometimes subjugated the country’s interests to those of the president. Concerned more about his own standing with the president, Pompeo also refused to provide the CIA workforce with any words of support in the face of Trump’s repeated attacks on it — fearing such encouragement would anger Trump.” Continue reading.

‘I never did that’: Haspel’s clapping for Trump rankles intel veterans

Former leaders of the CIA were taken aback by the director’s enthusiasm for the president’s State of the Union address.

CIA Director Gina Haspel’s attendance at President Donald Trump’s State of the Union on Tuesday—and her decision to stand and clap at certain lines—has surprised former senior intelligence officials who say the agency director should consistently appear nonpartisan.

Haspel entered the House chamber for Trump’s speech on Tuesday—for the second year in a row—with other members of the president’s Cabinet, including political appointees like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. And she stood, as they did, at Trump’s comments about Medicare and Social Security, abortion, paid family leave and immigration. She clapped at his line about rebuilding infrastructure.

“I never did that,” said former CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden, referring to Haspel’s clapping at the domestic policy issues. “That wouldn’t be right.” Continue reading.