CIA director nominee Mike Pompeo promised senators on Thursday that he would not bring back enhanced interrogation techniques widely regarded as torture, even if President-elect Trump ordered him to.
Pompeo similarly promised he would pursue the truth on Russian meddling in U.S. politics and present whatever facts he found to the president.
Throughout his confirmation hearings Thursday, Pompeo, a Republican congressman from Kansas, sought to reassure Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee that he would be a mainstream CIA director who would act within the law and follow the evidence wherever it leads him.
“Having been a member of the House Intelligence Committee, I understand full well that my job, if confirmed, will be to change roles from policymaker to information provider,” Pompeo told the committee. “The director must stay clearly on the side of collecting intelligence and providing objective analysis to policymakers, including this committee.”
The 53-year-old said that if he was confirmed, it would be the third time he has sworn an oath to uphold the Constitution: as a soldier, a congressman and then as CIA director.
Pompeo, like other Cabinet nominees testifying before the Senate this week, attempted to douse some of the flames Trump fanned both before and after winning the presidential election. Pompeo accepted the intelligence community’s conclusions about Russian hacking, promised a “robust” effort to deter future malicious cyberactivity by America’s enemies, and defended oft-maligned intelligence-gatherers whose recent critics have included the president-elect himself.
“The American people allow the CIA to operate in the shadows because they trust oversight,” said Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C.
“Politics has no place in your new line of business,” Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., told Pompeo. The committee’s top Democrat later added, “Intelligence is a team sport.”
“I spent the majority of my life outside of politics,” Pompeo replied.
The two Kansas political legends who were there to introduce Pompeo vouched for him on this score.
“I know this man and I know he’ll do a great job,” said former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, the 1996 Republican presidential nominee. “There’s no politics in the CIA. It’s very difficult and important work.”
“Mike is Army strong,” said Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., in praising Pompeo’s military service. Roberts added the nominee “will respect the constitutional limits we have placed on” the CIA and give “candid and honest assessments” of the intelligence.
The hearings were briefly stopped due to a power outage.
One by one, committee Democrats — and some Republicans like Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Marco Rubio of Florida — asked Pompeo to mollify their concerns about the CIA and national security in a Trump administration. He mostly succeeded, at least as far as his own job as CIA director was concerned.
The only fireworks in the room happened when Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., pressed Pompeo on his views about metadata collection. Wyden accused Pompeo of advocating mass data collection beyond anything previously anticipated by Congress. Pompeo said he would follow the law.
Sen. Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with the Democrats, sharply questioned Pompeo about a tweet in which he appeared to cite information obtained through WikiLeaks. Pompeo told King he did not regard WikiLeaks as a credible source of information.
Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., a freshman who was just elected in November, pressed Pompeo on gay rights and climate change. She asked him if he would roll back any of the agency’s policies protecting LGBT CIA employees. Pompeo said he would not.
Harris said climate change was a major national security threat. She also contended that Pompeo’s skepticism of some climate change claims led her to need reassurance that he would always follow the evidence wherever it led as CIA director. Pompeo told her he would.
The intelligence committee then went into a closed session.
