Mike Pompeo Is President-elect Trump’s Choice as CIA Director

President-elect Donald J. Trump has selected Rep Mike Pompeo (R-KS), a hawkish Republican from Kansas and a former Army officer, to lead the CIA. Rep Pompeo, who has served for three terms in Congress and is a member of the House Intelligence Committee, gained prominence for his role in the congressional investigation into the 2012 attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. He was a sharp critic of Hillary Clinton on the committee. If confirmed by the Senate, Rep Pompeo would take control of a spy agency that has been remade in the years since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, with a relentless focus on manhunts, counterterrorism and targeted killing operations. Over the past year, the CIA has undergone a bureaucratic reorganization under its director, John O. Brennan, an effort Rep Pompeo would decide whether he wants to continue.

On the intelligence committee, Rep Pompeo has taken a particularly hard-line stance on how to treat National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. After Snowden's allies began a campaign to get him pardoned, the entire House Select Committee on Intelligence wrote a letter to President Barack Obama urging against a pardon. The letter said Snowden was no whistle-blower, but rather a "serial exaggerator and fabricator." At that time, Rep Pompeo issued his own press release, calling Snowden a "liar and a criminal," who deserves "prison rather than pardon."