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.
