WASHINGTON — CIA director Mike Pompeo said Thursday that the agency is providing President Donald Trump with the best intelligence it can, disputing reports that the spy community is withholding information from the commander in chief.
“The CIA does not, has not, and will never hide intelligence from the president, period. We are not aware of any instance when that has occurred,” Pompeo said in a statement aimed at quelling reports that the intelligence community and Trump were in conflict.
He said news reports that the agency was keeping intelligence from the president are “dead wrong” and damage the “the integrity of thousands of professional intelligence officers.”
Pompeo’s statement came on the same day that a senior White House official said the administration had asked a New York-based private equity executive — Stephen Feinberg, co-founder of Cerberus Capital Management — to lead a review of the U.S. intelligence community.
Feinberg has been asked to make recommendations on improvements to efficiency and coordination between the various intelligence agencies, the official said. His position was not to become official until he completed an ethics review, said the official, who wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
However, Trump later appeared to back off the idea, saying somebody else might not be needed because it could be handled by Pompeo, FBI Director James Comey and Dan Coats, the president’s nominee to be director of national intelligence who has not yet been confirmed.
The news that Feinberg was being tapped to do an intelligence review drew complaints from Democrats.
“While we must always be open to improving organization and coordination among intelligence agencies, taken in concert with the large number of troubling statements President Trump has made denigrating our nation’s intelligence professionals, I am extremely concerned that this appointment signals a desire by the administration to marginalize the role of the DNI or even take unprecedented steps to politicize intelligence operations,” said Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee.
The DNI is the director of national intelligence.
Many intelligence professionals also viewed the White House review as another slight by the Trump White House, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence officer who spoke only on condition of anonymity out of concern for putting former colleagues at risk. They already are worried about politicization of the intelligence product and fear this could be a way to hinder their ability to provide information that might contradict the White House’s political views, the official said.
Some current and former administration officials have raised concern over the extent to which Trump has empowered members of his inner circle on matters that are typically left to the intelligence agencies.