|
The 'Deep State' Perspective: Good Riddance to CIA Director Pompeo
[Foreign Policy] As the post-mortems of Mike Pompeo’s tenure as CIA director are finalized, a rough consensus has emerged. Pompeo, the conventional wisdom holds, is the rare Trump administration Cabinet official who kept his head down, focused on the mission, and did what President Donald Trump refused to do: He spoke with clarity and conviction about Russia’s ongoing attack on U.S. democracy. He was an effective, if quiet, workhorse pursuing America’s national security interests, we’ve been told, whose close relationship with the president was good for the CIA and, in turn, U.S. national security. He was a founding member of the so-called Axis of Adults, whose membership has steadily dwindled.As is typically the case in Washington, the conventional wisdom is wrong. Pompeo, previously a Republican congressman from Kansas, came to the CIA as a square peg in a round hole, as many of Trump’s Cabinet selections did. Unlike some of his colleagues, however, Pompeo didn’t make any effort to become more spherical. He opted to make the role as CIA director conform to him. Many of these efforts were well beyond public view, taking place in secure conference rooms in Langley or within the confines of the White House Situation Room, only occasionally ‐ and even then, subtly ‐ spilling into public view. But the largely shrouded nature of Pompeo’s leadership of the agency didn’t make it any less pernicious to the CIA ‐ its integrity, mission, and workforce. Well before Pompeo was confirmed as CIA director in January 2017, there was every indication he would not approach the job as his predecessors had. Pompeo made a name for himself in Congress as a leading purveyor of hard-line conservative ideology and even conspiracy theories. While his firebrand reputation would have given most presidents-elect pause, Pompeo’s incendiary rhetoric ‐ especially his relentless, and not always factual, attacks on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the context of the Benghazi investigation ‐ reportedly endeared him to Trump, who himself rose to prominence peddling a conspiracy theory. Agency-watchers recognized that Pompeo’s selection was fraught, as the CIA workforce prizes its distance ‐ literal and physical ‐ from the politics of Washington. Indeed, there’s no dirtier word within Langley’s corridors than "politicization." That’s not to say that Pompeo’s tenure was doomed to failure. Previous directors ‐ from George H.W. Bush to Leon Panetta ‐ had successfully made the turn from political animal to above-it-all intelligence chief. As most CIA directors have, they checked their policy predispositions at the great seal and adopted a "just the facts" demeanor ‐ both in public and behind closed doors. Not Mike Pompeo. Posted by: Besoeker 2018-03-17 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=510401 |