From the reliable James Risen and Matthew Cole at The Intercept.
CIA director Gina Haspel confided to a former colleague that she wouldn’t be surprised if Trump replaced her by September.
Haspel has tried to placate the president and hindered her own agency in the process.
Haspel’s efforts to appease Trump while shielding the CIA have come at a high cost. Critics say that the agency, like the rest of the U.S. intelligence community, has become increasingly risk-averse and reluctant to disseminate intelligence that might be viewed as politically dangerous and likely to anger Trump and the White House.
Despite Trump’s public hectoring, the CIA has continued to collect useful intelligence about Russia’s efforts to intervene in the 2020 election, according to the former senior intelligence official. But the political danger begins once those findings are shared with the White House and the rest of the Trump administration.
“Nobody has been told to stand down,” said a former senior intelligence official, referring to CIA officers in the field working on sensitive targets like Russia. “But nobody is really all that eager to go up the chain of command with it.”
And the Democrats?
During Senate confirmation hearings, Kamala Harris gave Haspel an intense grilling on the issue of torture, “which helped raise Harris’s national profile and establish her as one of the most effective interrogators of Trump administration officials in Congress.”
If Trump is elected, Haspel is sure to be replaced. If Biden is elected, Haspel is sure to be replaced. Her future, at least in Langley, is not bright.
Source: Gina Haspel Hangs on at CIA, With Little Support
