Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call(WASHINGTON) — President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the CIA offered lawmakers a stark assessment Thursday: “The world is gaining on the U.S.”
“We have long seen this dynamic with the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons and ballistic missile technology, but increasingly in the cyber domain, countries thought to be unsophisticated … have overcome what appear to be low technological barriers of entry to engage in offensive cyber operations,” Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kansas, told the Senate Intelligence Committee in prepared remarks as it considers his nomination.
Noting a “complicated threat environment” with the likes of ISIS, Iran and China, Pompeo also recognized the growing threat from Russia, which the U.S. intelligence community has unanimously concluded took part in a massive cyber campaign to influence the U.S. presidential election. Trump has unabashedly questioned that conclusion.
“It is a policy decision as to what to do with Russia, but I understand it will be essential that the agency provide policymakers with accurate intelligence and clear-eyes analysis of Russian activities,” according to Pompeo, who was among the handful of Trump aides to attend last week’s briefing on Russian hacking with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and the current heads of the FBI and CIA.
That comment was likely welcomed by the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner, D-Virginia, who said he’s worried that in recent weeks the “entire intelligence community has repeatedly and unfairly been subjected to criticisms of its integrity,” and he demanded Pompeo’s “public assurance” to provide “unbiased, unvarnished, and timely intelligence assessments” to the Trump administration and to Congress.
“You and I agree that politics has no place in your new line of business,” Warner told Pompeo at the start of the hearing. “Your job will be to give the president the best professional judgment of America’s intelligence expert, the CIA, even when it might be inconvenient or uncomfortable. This intelligence must represent the best judgment of the CIA, whether or not that analysis is in agreement with the views of the president or anyone else who might receive them.”
Pompeo is a three-term congressman and a member of both the House Energy Committee and the House Intelligence Committee, which is responsible for conducting oversight of U.S. intelligence agencies and practices.
He has also served on the House Select Committee on Benghazi. He and fellow conservative Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, published a supplement to the majority report that was sharply critical of Hillary Clinton’s State Department and the Obama administration’s handling of the 2012 attacks on U.S. facilities in Libya. The report also accused the administration of misleading the public about events in Libya.
A West Point graduate who graduated first in his class in 1986, Pompeo attended Harvard University Law School after leaving active duty, and was also an editor at the Harvard Law Review.
Pompeo, 52, initially supported Sen. Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign, and considered challenging Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran in his Senate primary last year.
He is a staunch critic of President Obama’s foreign policy and, particularly, of the Iran nuclear deal, which Trump has also criticized.
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