بازدید 2424
Senate Confirms Trump’s Choice For CIA
The Senate on Monday night voted to confirm Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan., as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
As the voting concluded Monday night, Pompeo had 67 votes in his favor against 30 opposed. He needed a simple majority of the Senate to win confirmation.
Among the dissenters was Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., one of President Donald Trump’s rivals in the Republican primaries.
Paul voiced fears over Pompeo’s positions on torture and the use of surveillance.
"I worry that his desire for security will trump his defense of liberty,” he said.
"I swore an oath to defend the Constitution and the rights of the American people. Shielding the CIA from needed oversight is not consistent with that oath. Protecting the entire Bill of Rights is one of the main reasons I ran for office, and I will remain vigilant in that cause,” the senator said.
Pompeo, an Army veteran, was a member of the House Intelligence Committee. He was also a member of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which investigated the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, during which four Americans were killed.
Pompeo enters an intelligence community that has been at odds with Trump, who on Saturday made a fence-mending trip to the CIA’s headquarters.
Michael Morell, the former deputy director of the CIA and a Hillary Clinton supporter, said he had "come to admire” Pompeo after meeting him.
"Pompeo has two key challenges: winning over a workforce a bit skeptical of him … and making the CIA’s voice heard at the Trump White House,” Morell said. "I know Pompeo, and he will succeed at the first challenge. The second will be the defining issue of his tenure as director.”
During his confirmation hearing, Pompeo labeled as "sound” the verdict of intelligence agencies that Russia sought to influence the president election.
He also said he would "speak truth to power” and defy any order from Trump if it violated the law.
As a conservative lawmaker, Pompeo was a critic of Clinton and the Obama administration. Since the announcement of his nomination by Trump, he has said partisanship will be in the past.
"My job, if confirmed, will be to change roles,” he said.
During an interview with the Wichita Eagle, Pompeo outlined his view on the challenge facing the nation. Asked whether Americans were in more danger now than the past, he agreed.
"It’s a quite accurate perception. It’s different today than it was,” Pompeo said. "There’s no doubt that there’s increasing threats to the West. [FBI] Director [James] Comey talks about this. There is an investigation going on in every state with respect to ISIS. Every state! And that wasn’t the case a couple years ago.”
Pompeo also called cybersecurity "the next frontier of warfare.”
"It’s not new in the sense that [the] threat to America’s intellectual property has been out there for quite some time. We now see hacking taking place by foreign governments and by private individuals all around the world. America has to invest more and be more prepared. And we all have an obligation to be more secure in the way that we handle our own private information,” he said.
"There is a role there for the government to play, but a lot of this is going to be done by private individuals and private entities in America taking upon themselves of keeping their information more secure,” Pompeo said.
