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President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the CIA promised senators on Wednesday that he would not impose political litmus tests on the agency’s workforce or force employees to place loyalty to the new president over the country.
Trump has repeatedly portrayed the Central Intelligence Agency and other spy agencies as corrupt institutions carrying out a political agenda. But John Ratcliffe, the former Texas congressman chosen by Trump to lead the spy service, spoke in respectful terms about the agency’s work at his Senate confirmation hearing and vowed that he would not purge employees due to perceived political beliefs.
Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, asked Ratcliffe for reassurances “that you will resist efforts to fire or force out career CIA employees because of their perceived political views, and that you will not ask these employees to place loyalty to a political figure above loyalty to country.”
Ratcliffe said he never had that approach as director of national intelligence (DNI) in Trump’s first term in office and that he would not engage in a partisan overhaul as CIA director.
He said that “if you look at my record and my record as DNI, that never took place. That is never something anyone alleged. It’s something that I would never do.”
In written questions from the committee before the hearing, Ratcliffe was asked about Trump’s vow in 2023 to “clean out all of the corrupt actors in our National Security and Intelligence apparatus, and there are plenty of them.”
In his written reply, Ratcliffe said he was not in a position to comment on quotes attributed to Trump “for which context may be lacking.” But he said throughout his career he found CIA employees “to be skilled professionals who were driven by mission—not by political or ideological bias.”
Unlike other confirmation hearings, Ratcliffe’s two-hour hearing, which was followed by a closed-door session to discuss classified topics, proceeded smoothly with comparatively little partisan rancor. Ratcliffe is expected to be easily confirmed for the post by the Republican-controlled Senate, where he has mostly received praise for his performance as director of national intelligence in Trump’s first term.
Former intelligence officers, Democratic lawmakers and Western officials have harbored concerns that Trump and his deputies could undermine the work of the nation’s intelligence agencies by injecting politics into its conclusions and analysis, which could discourage allies from sharing sensitive information.
Since the start of his first term in 2017, Trump has had a stormy relationship with the intelligence community. He and his supporters have portrayed officials in those agencies — along with the Justice Department and the FBI— as part of a “deep state” plotting against him.
Questioned by Independent Sen. Angus King of Maine, Ratcliffe said he would not encourage an intelligence professional to alter their assessment to avoid criticism from the White House and pledged that there would be no “political litmus” or “loyalty” tests imposed on agency employees.
King said he hoped that Ratcliffe could persuade Trump to be more open to the information provided by the intelligence community.
“He’s notoriously skeptical of the intelligence community, and being skeptical is not necessarily a bad thing,” King said. ”But I hope that’s one of the first things that you can work with him on, is to make him receptive to the information and the truth that you will be providing as a result of your position.”
Ratcliffe said his top priority as CIA director would be the threat posed by China, and vowed to expand the agency’s focus on Beijing.
“The Chinese Communist Party remains committed to dominating the world economically, technologically and militarily, “ he said.
The CIA needed “to continue — and increase in intensity — its focuson the threats posed by China and its ruling Chinese Communist Party,” he added.
Ratcliffe said in his written answers to lawmakers that he would shift more of the agency’s workforce to collecting and analyzing intelligence on China and praised the creation by the current CIA director, William Burns, of a China Mission Center.
He said his effort would include “building broad and deep expertise on the target” and increasing “the number of officers with language capability in analytic and operational roles.”
As director, Ratcliffe said would aim to increase intelligence collection on China’s activity in new technologies and seek to counter Beijing’s efforts to exploit the theft of U.S. intellectual property and research.
The chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, said the CIA had become politicized and overly bureaucratic, and needed to get back to what he said was its core mission — collecting foreign intelligence or “stealing secrets.”
Ratcliffe agreed that the core mission of the agency was to collect intelligence and that it needed to guard against “complacency.” CIA officers who did not meet expectations would be held accountable, he said.
Cotton said the CIA had failed to anticipate a series of major global events, including the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, the strength of the Afghan government army fighting the Taliban, the ability of Ukraine’s military to fend off Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 and the fall of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad last month.
In his questioning of Ratcliffe, Cotton also cited an internal survey of the agency workforce on the objectivity of the CIA’s work, which is mandated by Congress but has not been released publicly. Ratcliffe said he was familiar with the highlights of the survey, which he said showed significant concerns among employees about “objectivity.”
He said the survey “reflects that a significant percentage of the current CIA workforce does have concerns about the objectivity of the products that they’re producing, and even cited that in specific instances, to include the PDB, the President’s daily brief,” Ratcliffe said. He did not elaborate.
The CIA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lawmakers from both parties also asked Ratcliffe to commit to renewing efforts to investigate the causes of the mysterial health incidents known as “Havana Syndrome” that have plagued intelligence officers and diplomats, first in Cuba and then in other countries.
Ratcliffe promised a renewed effort to get to the bottom of the health cases, saying: “I share your frustration that four years later, we’re very much in the same place in terms of trying to make an assessment and determination on the cause of this.”
Last week, a split emerged among intelligence agencies over whether foreign adversaries may have been responsible for the unexplained injuries, which include vertigo, severe headaches and other effects. A U.S. intelligence assessment released Friday revealed that two of seven unnamed spy agencies concluded a foreign actor may have developed or deployed a weapon that caused the incidents.
Dan De Luce is a reporter for the NBC News Investigative Unit.
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