Miller’s letter to CIA Director Gina Haspel informed her that the Pentagon would update a classified 2005 memorandum of understanding outlining the terms of Defense Department support to CIA missions. Instead, the review serves as a coda for the Trump administration’s chaos - and as an unintentional gift to the incoming Biden administration.
ABC News described the decision as “unprecedented.” The cuts would leave CIA paramilitary officers to die should they suffer casualties, former officers told the press.īut interviews with six current and former national security officials, including some directly involved in the Pentagon’s review, suggest it is neither immediate nor controversial. CNN reported that the Pentagon was “planning to withdraw most support for CIA counter-terror missions by the beginning of next year.” The New York Times suggested that the purpose was to “make it difficult” for the CIA to conduct its covert war in Afghanistan as Trump reduces the number of U.S. Drones, elite soldiers, fuel, and medical evacuation of casualties, for example, would disappear almost overnight. News reports suggested that the Pentagon was planning to strip the CIA of its support for counterterrorism missions around the world almost immediately. Last week, news broke that Trump’s acting defense secretary, Christopher Miller, sent a letter to the CIA notifying the agency that the Pentagon would review the terms of its military support to CIA operations. People close to former CIA directors John Brennan, David Petraeus, Leon Panetta and Michael Hayden told NBC News that they never attended a State of the Union speech.Years from now, we will forgive historians who, when documenting the Donald Trump presidency - its cold indifference to hundreds of thousands of Covid-19 deaths, its pandemic denialism, its migrant family separations, its use of the Justice Department as a political cudgel and the attorney general as a Mafia lawyer, the president’s genuine attempt to subvert the 2020 election results, and his impeachment - fail to note a bureaucratic dust-up between the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon in the waning days of the administration. CIA Director Gina Haspel applauds during President Donald Trump's State of the Union address at the Capitol on Tuesday.
It was in contrast to senior generals, who mainly sat with their arms folded, except during clearly nonpartisan moments, such as when a soldier reunited with his family. Her decision to stand and clap during applause lines, even on domestic matters, was consistent with the actions of other Cabinet officials, including the defense secretary and the director of national intelligence. But Trump made the CIA director a Cabinet post, meaning Haspel was invited. Bush, CIA directors didn't attend the State of the Union. In the administrations of presidents Barack Obama and George W. In the mind of this former officer and others interviewed by NBC News, the CIA director should hold herself apart from a president's partisan rhetoric - especially the sentiments of a president who has frequently disparaged the intelligence community.
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