At the end of his first term, then-President Donald Trump tried to appoint Kash Patel, a staunch supporter of MAGA, to the position of deputy director of the CIA. But the agency’s then-head, career scout Gina Haspel, threatened to resign in protest and the appointment fell through.
Now, four years later, Patel is considered a possible choice for CIA director or another top national security post in a second Trump administration. And most likely, there will be no one to stand in his way this time.
Patel is one of the few staunch political allies President-elect Trump has considered overseeing the country’s national security. During his first term in office, Trump often clashed with deputies and senior officials who were not sufficiently committed to his agenda.
According to sources familiar with the transition process, the president-elect this time around is eager to fill his administration with people who will carry out his decisions without question.
Mark Short, who served as chief of staff to former Vice President Mike Pence, said Trump’s first-term picks to lead the intelligence agencies, including Haspel, and former lawmakers Mike Pompeo and Dan Coats were highly capable. good.
“There was an undeniable skill there,” Short said. “And I think it would be a mistake to go in any other direction than that.”
Short added: “Certainly some of the people in his inner circle who are the most, perhaps the most vocal, are looking for a different path.”
Lawmakers, former intelligence officials and Western officials worry that Trump and a group of loyalists could reshape the structure and mission of the nation’s intelligence apparatus.
Officials could be pressured to twist their findings to fit the White House’s political agenda, allies could reduce information sharing because of Trump’s aggressive approach to privacy, and in a worst-case scenario, spy agencies could become tools of punishment against local authorities. Political opponents, former officers and others say.
One former senior intelligence officer said: “I think a lot depends on who they appoint as director, deputy and chief operations officer at the CIA.” The appointments will set the tone and determine whether the spy agency can maintain professional, apolitical standards or become the target of a politically motivated restructuring, the former officer said.
Patel, an outspoken critic of the intelligence agencies and Justice Department who served on the White House National Security Council during the Trump administration, declined to comment. He supported Trump’s baseless claim that the 2020 election was “stolen”.
Trump aides have previously dismissed warnings about how the president-elect could politicize the intelligence community, saying it is President Joe Biden and his administration who are injecting partisan politics into the intelligence community, not Trump.
Brian Hughes, a transition spokesman, said in an email to NBC News that Trump won a decisive victory on a “common sense mandate for change” and that “people can expect an administration that reflects the commitment to see that agenda implemented.” place from day 1.”
Distrust of the “deep state”.
In 2017, which coincided with the beginning of his first presidential term, Trump had a troubled relationship with the intelligence community. He and his supporters have portrayed officials at those agencies — along with the Justice Department — as part of a “deep state” plotting against him.
in 2018 news conference With Vladimir Putin, Trump sided with the Russian president, according to his own intelligence agencies, when asked whether he believed Moscow interfered in the 2016 election.
At the event in Helsinki, Trump said: “I have a lot of confidence in my intelligence officers.” “But let me tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and forceful in his denial today.”
Another critic of the intelligence community, former Rep. Devin Nunes of California, could also be in the mix for a job at the CIA under the new Trump administration, according to congressional aides and Republican activists.
Other possible choices for the intelligence world include: John Ratcliffe, a former Texas congressman who served as director of national intelligence under Trump; Robert O’Brien, Trump’s former national security adviser; and Sen. Marco Rubio.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia to defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton has deeply angered Trump and his supporters. The investigation, which ended in 2019, found no evidence of collusion but did not reach a conclusion on whether Trump obstructed justice.
In response to the investigation, former Attorney General Bill Barr appointed a special counsel to investigate the FBI and the intelligence community’s investigation of Trump. After a four-year investigation, special prosecutor John Durham released a scathing 300-page report saying the FBI was negligent in opening the investigation on vague and unspecified grounds. insufficient information.
Despite this, Durham found that no high-ranking FBI or CIA officials had committed any crimes. His two criminal prosecutions, both for perjury, ended with a jury acquitting the defendants.
Yet Trump and his allies continue to paint the Justice Department and the intelligence community as a hostile bureaucracy with civil servants.
Steve Bannon after Trump won the election on Tuesday. A longtime Trump ally has demanded “justice” and punishment for the FBI, DOJ and CIA officials he claims have harassed him and Trump and harmed the country.
“Now you’re going to pay the price for trying to destroy this country,” Bannon said.
Former domestic spy
Former intelligence and security officials said their former colleagues are bracing for a difficult time in which they may face dilemmas in carrying out unethical or national security orders.
“I very much expect that members of the intelligence community will be challenged to decide whether or not to stand up to Trump, just as they have done so many times in his first term,” one congressional aide said.
Former intelligence officials disagree on whether Trump will try to use the spy agencies against his domestic political opponents, and how the intelligence workforce and the courts would respond if he did.
After the Watergate scandal, laws were passed that expressly prohibited the use of spy agencies against Americans. The measures were a response to the Nixon administration’s use of the CIA to gather intelligence on local protesters opposing the Vietnam War.
Nixon also tried unsuccessfully to enlist the help of the CIA to stop the FBI’s investigation into the break-in of the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters at the Watergate hotel, which led to the scandal.
One former senior intelligence official said that for all its shortcomings, the intelligence community would not easily become a domestic spy service, and that many career officers would refuse to follow illegal orders.
“They’re going to be quite resistant to turning it over to the American people,” the former official said.
Thousands of political appointees
Trump’s allies have called for a review of the effort at the end of his last term, when senior officials plan to fire thousands of civil servants across the federal government and replace them with political appointees.
It is unclear whether Trump and his nominees to lead the intelligence community will seek to replace large numbers of civil servants at the spy agencies.
Presidents face few legal limits when it comes to their authority over intelligence agencies, according to legal experts and former senior officials.
According to Glenn Gerstell, who served as the National Security Agency’s general counsel from 2015 to 2020, “the law allows for a lot of discretion” and Trump will have “a very free hand.”
Trump’s supporters say dire warnings about the future of intelligence agencies under the new Trump administration are hysterical and overblown, and his record in the White House shows he has strengthened the spy agencies.
Trump’s supporters have said it would be appropriate for the president-elect to provide oversight of the intelligence community through political appointments to ensure agencies carry out the president’s policies without red tape.
“No matter what side you’re on politically, you have to want political control because we don’t want this country to become a security state,” said a former official close to the Trump team.
The Heritage Foundation’s proposed action plan, Project 2025, calls for the president-elect to immediately select a deputy director of the CIA who would not need Senate confirmation and could “begin to implement the president’s agenda.”
“Additional designees should be deployed within the agency as needed to assist the director in overseeing his activities,” the report states.
The document also calls for breaking up the “bureaucrat cubicle in DC” by moving some of the CIA’s headquarters out of Virginia.
Robert Litt, who served as senior adviser to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence from 2009 to 2017, said the unprecedented number of political appointees leading intelligence agencies could distort intelligence analysis and lead to illegal or illegal activity. recommended decisions.
“I think it would be a very, very bad thing for the intelligence community and the nation if the intelligence community was dominated by a group of political loyalists,” he said. Interview with NBC News earlier this year.
“One is the risk that intelligence analysis isn’t called in the middle,” Litt said. “And the other is the risk that intelligence agencies will be directed at things that are illegal or inappropriate.”