Numerous CIA officials have expressed concern about Director Mike Pompeo’s close ties to President Donald Trump, The Washington Post reports.
Confirmed not long after Trump’s inauguration, Pompeo has been overseeing the Counterintelligence Mission Center, a role that puts him close to the FBI’s ongoing investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
The center has followed the investigation closely, and it tipped off the FBI about potential collusion between Russian agents and Trump’s campaign, according to The Post.
But now, CIA officials have started to worry that Pompeo – who once said Russia’s interference in the 2016 US presidential election was “no news” and part of a pattern – could be tested by his ties to Trump, according to The Post. The center, which is pursuing information about the election interference, reports directly to Pompeo.
“People have to watch him,” an unnamed CIA official told The Post. “It’s almost as if he can’t resist the impulse to be political.”
A second official said that many at the agency were concerned that "if you were passing on something too dicey" to Pompeo, "he would go to the White House with it."
Pompeo has a closer relationship with the president than other top intelligence officials do, according to The Post, and his publicly expressed views mirror many of the White House's official stances on issues such as North Korea, Russia's role in Syria, and leak prevention.
"It is always a balancing act between a director's access to the president and the need to protect CIA's sensitive equities," John Sipher, a former senior CIA official, told The Post. "Pompeo clearly has a more difficult challenge in maintaining that balance than his predecessors given the obvious concerns with this president's unique personality, obsession with charges against him, lack of knowledge and tendency to take impulsive action."