It was an appropriate, if inauspicious, beginning to Thursday’s confirmation hearing for Mike Pompeo that the lights suddenly went out during opening statements. The Kansas congressman is Donald Trump’s selection to head the Central Intelligence Agency, which operates in the shadows. But even this was a little too on the nose for the Republican chairman of the Senate’s select committee on intelligence, North Carolina’s Richard Burr, who alerted the senators, staff, and press that the hearing would move to another room in the adjacent office building, where hopefully the electricity would not cut off. It was the only speed bump in an otherwise smooth hearing for Pompeo—even the two requisite Code Pink protestors stayed silent throughout the proceedings.
There was a chummy atmosphere around Pompeo, with introductions from two fellow Kansans, senator Pat Roberts and former senator Bob Dole, setting the tone. (The 93-year-old Dole joked that with his bad eyesight, he thought the darkened room earlier in the morning was “perfect.”) An Army veteran who graduated first in his class at West Point, Pompeo was heaped with praise for his service and good-natured ribbing from the other military vets on the committee. John McCain of Arizona, a Naval Academy grad, said Pompeo would be a fine CIA director despite having had a “very poor education” at West Point. And Arkansas’s Tom Cotton, a former Army captain, joked that it was a stain on Pompeo’s record that he chose to serve in the armored branch instead of Cotton’s infantry.
A member of the House of Representatives’ own intelligence committee, the three-term Republican demonstrated his knowledge and conversance with the matters facing the CIA (which Pompeo consistently identified by its full name). He identified terrorist attacks and operations on the homeland as the greatest threat to national security, adding that he’d put “North Korea, China, and Russia right up there.” Pompeo also made efforts to assure the senators, particularly Democrats, that he acknowledged the non-political nature of his new role.
“I understand full well that my job, if confirmed, will be to change roles from policymaker to information provider,” Pompeo said. He praised the CIA as “the world’s leading intelligence collection agency” and singled out its agents as “patriots” and “warriors.” But he also challenged the premise of a question from Democratic senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who asked about how he would deal with the low morale among CIA operatives. Manchin attributed this to the misuse of intelligence agencies and their findings by politicians to make political points.
“I’ve had a chance over the last few weeks to spend a little bit of time with a handful of people out there. I haven’t seen the low morale that you describe,” Pompeo replied. “They’re human beings, they’re Americans, too. They’ve watched the political process. But what I’ve seen from the spirited warriors out in the Central Intelligence Agency is a desire to sort of get out of the middle of this fight and continue to perform their function.”
Pompeo has earned a reputation in the House for being blunt, which was on display when he was asked to describe the difference between the CIA and other intelligence agencies. “The Central Intelligence Agency has a mission,” he said, “and it’s to steal secrets.” Asked about WikiLeaks—a favorite of Donald Trump since the website published the hacked emails of DNC officials—Pompeo said, “I have never believed that WikiLeaks was a credible source of information.” He was also direct when asked about the trustworthiness of a recent intelligence community assessment that concluded the Russian government had attempted to interfere in the recent presidential election—something Trump had previously downplayed. “Everything I’ve seen suggests to me that the report as an analytical product is sound,” Pompeo said.
But he also demonstrated restraint, particularly during two tough rounds of questioning from Democratic senators. The first, with Oregon’s Ron Wyden, was a substantive debate about Pompeo’s stated desire for restarting a metadata collection program on Americans. “So you would be in favor of a new law collecting all of this data about the personal lives of our people, and I think it would be helpful if you could start by saying if there are any boundaries, in your view, to something this sweeping?” Wyden asked.
Pompeo agreed there were legal boundaries to what the government could collect but suggested that any intelligence agency that did not pursue publicly available data on Americans that could help stop a terrorist attack or kill innocent American lives. “If someone’s out there on their Facebook page talking about an attack or plotting an attack against America, I think you would find the director of the CIA and the intelligence community grossly negligent if they didn’t pursue that information,” Pompeo said.
“Congressman, I don’t take a backseat to anybody in terms of protecting this country when our security’s on the line,” a visibly annoyed Wyden shot back. Pompeo quickly assured him he did not mean to imply that.
And in another, less substantive exchange, California senator Kamala Harris pressed Pompeo about his conservative views on gay marriage and climate change. He assured Harris that he was committed to equal treatment of the CIA’s gay and lesbian employees. Did she have assurances, Harris asked, “that you will not put in place any policies that would discriminate against any members [of the CIA] because of their sexual orientation?”
A flabbergasted Pompeo replied: “Ma’am, I can’t imagine putting in place any policy that was discriminatory with respect to any employee.”
That odd question was perhaps the most hostile Pompeo received—a sign that another Trump nominee is on his way to a breezy confirmation.
