'Inexperienced, loyalist clowns': National security expert slams possible Trump CIA picks

A top national security specialist with expertise on Russia and nuclear weapons is warning about two individuals reportedly being considered for the role of Director of the Central Intelligence Agency under President-elect Donald Trump.

Richard Grenell, the former Trump acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and U.S. Ambassador to Germany, has been “suggested for a role such as director of the Central Intelligence Agency, where he may be urged by Trump to unearth the so-called ‘deep state,'” CNN reported Thursday.

Also in the running for Director of CIA is Kash Patel, CNN reports, “a former Trump national security official who is helping organize the next administration’s transition.”

“Patel himself has told associates that he wants to be CIA director, people briefed on the matter say. It would be a triumph after Trump contemplated in his final months in office putting Patel in key jobs at FBI or CIA. That idea was blocked by opposition from then CIA Director Gina Haspel and [Attorney General Bill] Barr.”

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“Patel and Trump,” CNN adds, “are both vowing to oust officials who played any role in investigations of Trump and his supporters. Trump has vowed to fire Christopher Wray, who Trump appointed in 2017 after firing James Comey, and whose 10-year term has more than two years remaining.”

In 2022, Grenell was accused by Olivia Troye, a national security expert with decades of experience, of having “tried to get Mike Pence to attend a white supremacist gathering during one of his overseas trips.” Troye served in the Trump White House as Homeland Security and Counterterrorism advisor to Vice President Pence. Her remark was in response to a comment by U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA), who had said Grenell “used to hang out with Nazis when he was supposed to be representing us in Germany.”

NCRM has not confirmed the allegations.

“Grenell has been acting as a kind of shadow secretary of state, meeting with far-right leaders and movements, pledging Trump’s support and, at times, working against the current administration’s policies,” along with “attacking President Biden,” The Washington Post reported in March. It also reported Trump had been calling Grenell, “my envoy.”

The paper detailed Grenell had “arrived in Guatemala in January, days before the new president was to be sworn in — and threw his support behind aright-wing campaign to undermine the election.”

“Grenell met with a hard-line group that sued to block the inauguration,” and, “defended Guatemalan officials who had seized ballot boxes in an effort to overturn a vote declared ‘free and fair’ by the United States and international observers, and he attacked the U.S. State Department’s sanctions against hundreds of anti-democratic actors.”

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“They are trying to intimidate conservatives in Guatemala,” Grenell said. “This is all wrapped into this kind of phony concern about democracy.”

The Post also reported that “Grenell’s globe-trotting has sparked deep concern among career national security officials and diplomats, who warn that he emboldens bad actors and jeopardizes U.S. interests in service of Trump’s personal agenda. In the process, Grenell is openly charting a foreign policy road map for a Republican presidential nominee who has found common cause with authoritarian leaders and threatened to blow up partnerships with democratic allies.”

In 2020, when Grenell was serving as Trump’s acting Director of National Intelligence, ProPublica reported, “Richard Grenell’s past clients could raise concerns about his access to state secrets, according to his own office’s rules.”

Grenell had “worked as a paid publicist for a foundation funded by Hungary’s increasingly authoritarian government — his second former client to prompt scrutiny because Grenell did not disclose the work.”

“In 2016, the Magyar Foundation of North America paid Grenell’s consulting firm, Capitol Media Partners, $103,750 for ‘public relations’ services, according to the foundation’s tax filing. The foundation was funded and supervised by Hungary’s government, according to records obtained by the Hungarian nonprofit news organization Atlatszo. The foundation’s director, Jo Anne Barnhart, had been a registered lobbyist for Prime Minister Viktor Orban,” ProPublica revealed.

“Grenell, however, did not register, even though public relations work on behalf of a foreign government falls squarely under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, according to lawyers specializing in the matter. FARA is the same law that Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and former deputy campaign manager, Rick Gates, were convicted of violating.”

Tom Nichols, the retired Naval War College professor who has a PhD in government from Georgetown University and is now a writer at The Atlantic, on Thursday weighed in on news Grenell and Patel are potential picks to head the Central Intelligence Agency.

“During a crisis – say, a nuclear crisis – the DCIA [Director of the Central Intelligence Agency] is supposed to be one of the key people with a firm grip on data and solid judgment to advise the President on what to do next. Appointing inexperienced, loyalist clowns is not a big deal at some agencies. Not this one.”

Asked, what “Defcon level are we at now?” Nichols replied, “Well, I referred to this time as a national emergency, just as the last Trump administration was.”

Dr. Norman Ornstein, Emeritus scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and a contributing editor at The Atlantic, responded to Nichols: “Not just inexperienced and clowns, people who cannot be trusted with secrets, especially our most significant ones.”