John Ratcliffe’s 2020 nomination to become the next director of national intelligence was a slog. His nomination to become the next CIA director mainly was a cakewalk, now garnering Democratic support. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) has already announced that he will vote to support confirmation. The hearing was split into two parts. After a short recess in the afternoon on Wednesday, the session moved behind closed doors.
MUST WATCH: John Ratcliffe, @realDonaldTrump's nominee to be CIA Director, on restoring real leadership to the CIA:
— Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) January 15, 2025
"My leadership at CIA will focus on setting and communicating priorities, and demanding relentless execution. Above all will be a strict adherence to the CIA’s… pic.twitter.com/XcaSbzyJL2
Ratcliffe promised to investigate Havana syndrome, which has befallen scores of intelligence officials over the past few years. There have been spotty reports that these health incidents were the intentional actions of a foreign adversary. He wanted to re-focus the agency’s operations on that emerging geopolitical rival. In short, Ratcliffe intends to enhance the agency’s intelligence-gathering operations. The agency isn’t where it needs to be; frankly, it’s hard to argue against that point. He also pledged to be an apolitical actor and keep the CIA within that boundary. He exhibited the same principle as DNI director for which he was lauded (via NYT):
…senators from both parties view Mr. Ratcliffe as one of the more qualified senior officials picked by Mr. Trump, whose focus on the threat from China is widely shared by Republican and Democratic lawmakers.
Mr. Ratcliffe is expected to outline his vision of an agency that offers intelligence free of political bias. While he said he would not discuss specific intelligence priorities, he promised he would make the C.I.A. less averse to risk and more willing to conduct covert action when ordered by the president, “going places no one else can go and doing things no one else can do.”
According to his prepared remarks, Mr. Ratcliffe promised that the C.I.A. would collect intelligence in every part of the globe, “no matter how dark or difficult.”
He also pledged that the agency’s analysis would be objective, “never allowing political or personal biases to cloud our judgment or infect our products.”
Mr. Ratcliffe evoked the C.I.A.’s predecessor — the Office of Strategic Services — and said the ideal recruit for the agency would be a “Ph.D. who could win a bar fight.”
“This sentiment is the essence of what today’s C.I.A. must recapture,” Mr. Ratcliffe is expected to say, according to his prepared remarks.
At the same time, and while some might take it as political, he did call out the serial lies hurled by Democrats, especially Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who peddled outright drivel about the Hunter Biden laptop, which turned out to be authentic and not Russian disinformation. That laptop was a virus that engulfed the Biden White House in a scandal, as it exposed the family’s shady influence-peddling deals, culminating in the shameless blanket pardon of the president’s crack-cocaine addicted disgrace of a son for any crime he might have committed between 2014-2024.
BREAKING: President Trump’s CIA chief nominee John Ratcliffe calls out Adam Schiff.
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) January 15, 2025
“When a chairman of an intelligence committee misrepresented that a laptop owned by Biden's son was somehow a Russian intelligence operation... I told the people the truth.” pic.twitter.com/mdCQbBFsbC
That’s the behavior Ratcliffe will never and has never partaken in, unlike Adam the pencil head. He will sail through confirmation, as will virtually all of Trump’s picks, even RFK Jr.