Three-term U.S. House member Mike Pompeo of Kansas has been selected by Donald Trump to head the Central Intelligence Agency. A cursory glance at his biography shows he’s eminently qualified. Pompeo was first in his class at West Point, served as an Army officer during the cold war in Europe, and graduated from Harvard Law. After coming home to Kansas, Popmpeo became head of an equipment manufacturing company before being elected to Congress in 2010.
In Congress, his tenure on the House Intelligence Committee has shown Pompeo to be especially engaged in national security issues—and a very prominent critic of the Obama administration. Pompeo, who signed on to the majority report of the Benghazi Select Committee, actually co-authored a “supplemental, 51-page ‘additional views’ report of their own.” In general, he put forth many extremely critical, but nonetheless credible, charges that the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the rest of the Obama administration had mishandled the Benghazi terror attack for political reasons.
Pompeo was also a very vocal critic of the Obama administration’s Iran deal, and again, the congressmen offered very critical and serious critiques of what the administration had done wrong. In February, I accompanied Pompeo and two other colleagues representing the Congressional Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Armed Services committees they went to Iran’s diplomatic office in Washington to formally ask Tehran to address their concerns.
Not only is Pompeo qualified for CIA director, he would represent a welcome change of direction from an Obama administration marked by catastrophic intelligence failures.
